WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
The Philip Polkinghorne murder trial has resumed this morning, as the defence team continues calling witnesses to give evidence.
The trial, now in its sixth week, heard from an electricity expert yesterday afternoon, who said the power data he analysed from Polkinghorne’s Upland Rd home showed the washing machine in all likelihood didn’t run the morning of April 5, when the Crown says he killed his wife. The prosecution has repeatedly referenced a slightly damp top sheet found by police in the dryer of the guest bedroom. The bed where Polkinghorne said Hanna spent her final night was missing a top sheet.
Earlier, the jury heard from several co-workers of Polkinghorne, who said he was dedicated to his patients to the point of sometimes waiving his surgeon’s fee when they couldn’t afford important procedures. They said they enjoyed working with him.
There are several expert witnesses for the defence yet to appear who defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC indicated he would be calling in his opening address, including pathologists, a psychiatrist and a suicide expert, who he said would dispel myths around suicide promulgated by the prosecution.
The list of defence witnesses, jurors learned, will be long – likely stretching the trial past the six weeks that had initially been allotted.
One person the defence will not call is Polkinghorne himself, his lawyer said on Friday, suggesting that allowing him to do so would have resulted in more distractions about his sex life and drug use.
Monday’s evidence: Alibi or evidence tampering? Polkinghorne blood stain scrutinised at murder trial
After flying from Louisiana to Auckland last year, an American crime scene examination expert discovered a blood stain at murder defendant Philip Polkinghorne’s home. But whether the finding will ultimately help or hurt the eye surgeon’s defence at his ongoing murder trial is a matter jurors will have to mull.
The stain could help explain a mysterious graze found on the eye surgeon’s head shortly after emergency responders arrived at his Remuera home on the morning of wife Pauline Hanna’s death. But prosecutors strongly hinted today that it could instead show Polkinghorne’s willingness to tamper with evidence.
The testimony came as the defence took control of the witness list for the first time, endeavouring to flip the narrative of the trial by emphasising Hanna’s struggles with work stress and depression over the eye surgeon defendant’s drug use and extra-marital sex life.
The defence, now in its third day of calling witnesses, has repeatedly suggested that Hanna’s death was exactly as it initially seemed – self-harm by someone who suffered long-term depression and was under immense amounts of work stress.
One previously unanswered question was the abrasion that paramedics and police noticed on Polkinghorne’s head as they arrived at the scene of Hanna’s death. The doctor was asked about it, both by first responders and during a recorded police interview just hours later. He had no explanation, which prosecutors noted during their opening address in July.
But expert witness Timothy Scanlan, who started his own forensic consulting firm after overseeing a large crime lab in suburban New Orleans, told jurors today that he found a smudge of Polkinghorne’s blood on the wooden siding of the stairs next to where Hanna’s body was found.
It could potentially give credence to a defence suggestion that Polkinghorne hit his head without realising it while trying in a haze of panic to untie his wife after discovering her body.
But there are two very obvious problems with that contention, the Crown responded: the sample was taken by the defence expert two years after Hanna’s death, and the stain he found on the stairway looked noticeably different than the one photographed by police in the days immediately following her death.
Polkinghorne, now 71, is accused of having fatally strangled Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home before staging the scene on the morning of April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging. Prosecutors have suggested the defendant was high on methamphetamine when he lashed out at his wife of 24 years, possibly during an argument over his exorbitant spending on sex workers or his “double life” with Sydney escort Madison Ashton.
Much of the first five weeks of the High Court at Auckland trial have focused on those themes. But prosecutors announced this morning that they had finished their case in chief after having called roughly 60 witnesses, passing the baton to defence lawyer Ron Mansfield, KC, to give an opening address and call anyone else to the witness box who he felt jurors should hear from.
The list of defence witnesses, jurors learned, will be long – likely stretching the trial past the six weeks that had initially been allotted.
Mansfield emphasised during his lengthy address on Friday that there was no physical evidence indicating anything other than a suicide by hanging had taken place. He suggested to jurors that salacious details about his client’s drug use and sex life was a distraction – an audacious attempt to pitch a motive when the Crown couldn’t even prove an assault had occurred.
He acknowledged jurors might think his client a selfish, “silly old fool” who was living a lie, but that doesn’t make him a murderer, he said.
“You might think that [behaviour] might have added to the burden that Pauline was living with at the time, rather than providing a motive for a murder that never took place,” Mansfield explained.
Yesterday, the jury also heard from an ophthalmologist, who is pursuing permanent name suppression. He told the court he was asked to be a trustee on one of the Polkinghorne family trusts. That was in line with the practice in previous years where someone known to the family would be brought on as a trustee, he saw his role as a tie-breaker. He asked to come off the trust about 2019 and said Hanna finally came to visit him with the form to sign in March 2021, the month before her death. After she died, Polkinghorne called him distraught. “It was one of the worst conversations I’ve had,” he said. Polkinghorne was respected internationally for his work as an ophthalmologist, the witness said.
Following that testimony, jurors also heard from Sharon Jenkins, a former receptionist at Auckland Eye, who house-sat for Polkinghorne and Hanna about six times before Hanna’s death.
Jenkins says Polkinghorne had a good relationship with staff at Auckland Eye. “His patients loved him,” she said. “He always treated his patients really well.” She told police in 2021 Polkinghorne’s home had “panic buttons” in the master and guest bedroom, red buttons on security panels. Prosecutor Brian Dickey in cross-examination questioned how she knew these were panic buttons and she said her ex-partner had identified them as such. Jenkins said Polkinghorne’s weight loss and tiredness was so pronounced she worried he might have cancer.
The trial continued with evidence from Leonie Darlington as another defence witness. The former surgical booker at Auckland Eye said Polkinghorne was polite, courteous and generous to staff. “He was very good to his patients, they always came first, and he would do anything for them,” she said. Sometimes he would forgo his surgeon’s fee so a patient could undergo an important surgery, she said. “He was very good to work with. He was a perfectionist, he had a very high standard and he expected that from his staff as well.”
Jillian Mary Blakely also gave evidence for the defence. Blakely, a registered nurse specialising in ophthalmology, who worked with Polkinghorne on and off for 27 years, said he was “very dedicated, he was very committed. He always had the patient’s interest at heart and I really respected him for those attributes”. The Crown has said there were complaints about Polkinghorne’s manner with nurses in theatre in the years before Hanna’s death. Blakely said she enjoyed working with him but said he could get a bit rattled during stressful moments, she adds. Blakely said he liked people to be interested in the case and preferred silence in the theatre when operating. “We had a good working relationship, I really enjoyed working with him,” she said.
The jury also heard from Tony Robert Glucina, an investment advisor at JBWere, who repeatedly touted the benefits of the firm’s services in the witness box. He said Polkinghorne’s portfolio had done well, reaching $2.2m “It sounds a bit like an infomercial for JBWere,” said Mansfield at one point. “It’s a wonder we’ve got anyone left in court, they’ll all be running out of the court to invest in you.”
The Crown earlier repeatedly suggested Polkinghorne was squirrelling away money that was at least partly Hanna’s, including transferring her salary to accounts he controlled, like the JBWere investment fund. Glucina said it was not unusual for a couple to have a fund only in one of their names. However, under cross-examination, he said the Privacy Act meant he would have been unable to disclose details of the fund to Hanna, and was unaware how much she knew. Glucina described a dinner with Polkinghorne and Hanna at their Rings Beach bach. He said his partner Buffy, a “well-known naturopath and nutritionist”, noticed Hanna did not eat anything despite there being three courses and a substantial desert.
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Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
The Herald will be covering the case in a daily podcast, Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial. You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, through The Front Page feed, or wherever you get your podcasts.
