WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
The Philip Polkinghorne murder trial has resumed this morning with forensic pathologist Professor Stephen Cordner back in the witness box.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield is continuing leading the evidence of the defence pathologist whose evidence began on Wednesday.
Cordner this morning confirmed he found no evidence of sexual activity or a sexual assault from the pathology report or photographs of Pauline Hanna’s body he’s examined. He also found nothing specific that was indicative of a past assault.
The Australian forensic pathologist has also stated that “the findings support hanging and there’s no findings to support homicidal ligature or manual strangulation”.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER THE LIVE BLOG
STORY CONTINUES
Cordner has flown over from Melbourne to give evidence and first took the stand on Wednesday. There are still defence witnesses left to call after him, including experts defence lawyer Ron Mansfield mentioned in his opening address, such as a psychiatrist and suicide expert. The trial did not sit yesterday due to juror commitments and a Court of Appeal session in Auckland.
Cordner’s more than 40 years of experience conducting autopsies included a period as director of the Victoria Institute of Forensic Medicine. He’s also had roles, the jury heard, with the International Committee of the Red Cross, undertaking post-mortems on victims of war in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.
Cordner reviewed the autopsy report prepared by forensic pathologist Dr Kilak Kesha and looked at the crime scene and post-mortem photos.
He said he found no solid evidence to support the contention Pauline Hanna was killed either by manual strangulation - someone placing their hands or arms around her neck to throttle her - or ligature strangulation, meaning a rope, belt or similar was used.
“There is no evidence of a forensic pathology kind to positively support a conclusion that this deceased has been homicidally, manually or ligaturely killed,” he said at the conclusion of his evidence on Wednesday.
He based that conclusion on the lack of internal or external injuries apparent from the examination of her neck.
For example, if she had been throttled with the woven leather belt Polkinghorne said he found on her neck, there would be abrasions on the skin of the neck. That’s because a ligature strangulation is a violent act, that would in all likelihood occur amid a dynamic and chaotic struggle, where the belt would have moved up and down against the neck causing damage to the skin, he said. No such damage was found.
Similarly, there was no damage internally to the neck, such as persistent bruising or injuries to the strap muscles on either side of the neck, he said.
Cordner said the only wounds found on Hanna’s body were minor non-specific injuries such as a graze on the bridge of her nose and a small bruise on her temple. They were not anywhere near the extent normally seen in strangulation victims, 70% of who fight back violently to resist their strangler, resulting in extensive defensive injuries, he said. In the other 30% of cases where there’s good reason for the lack of defensive injuries, such as the victim being very old or unwell.
Hanna did not lose any acrylic nails before her death or have any DNA or blood under her nails indicating she fought back, Cordner said.
The defence pathologist was asked about the constellation of four bruises on her right arm, said by the Crown to resemble a grip mark. He noted there was no evidence of a thumbprint to indicate the grip would have gone all round the arm.
Mansfield then produced a photo of the crime scene on April 5, 2021, showing a photo of Hanna’s body shortly after police arrived at the scene. No bruise marks on her right arm could be seen. Cordner said that could mean they hadn’t developed yet, but he added it could also mean they were inflicted post-mortem.
The lack of drag marks on her body indicated she had not been moved across a carpet after death, he said. He emphasised the difficulty of moving a body after death, saying the rule in pathology is it takes two people because it is so heavy, floppy and difficult to manoeuvre.
He said he found it “quite mind-boggling to imagine” that the eye surgeon’s wife could have been manipulated after death to simulate a suicide by hanging.
His analysis of the lividity patterns on Hanna’s body, the redness due to blood pooling after death, tended to support Polkinghorne’s version of events, that he had found his wife in a chair having hanged herself, before cutting her down and placing her on the floor.
As for the disappearing partial belt mark on Hanna’s neck, observed by police on April 5 but mostly gone by the time of the autopsy the next day, he said that was no proof she did not hang herself.
Pathologists do not have any issue concluding a hanging had occurred even when no mark at all is left on the neck, and the literature supports this, Cordner said.
Defence continues to lay out its case
The defence team has been calling witnesses for a week now. Among them were Tracey Hanna, Pauline Hanna’s younger sister who said outright she believes the successful DHB manager took her own life. She said Hanna had in the early 1990s disclosed to her and their late mother a previous attempt to take her own life shortly after their father’s death. Tracey referenced the fact their mother had died in February 2021, two months before Hanna’s death, and said the similarity had brought back that memory of the suicide attempt disclosure from three decades prior. Prosecutor Brian Dickey took aim at the fact none of Hanna’s other close friends or relatives had heard anything of this alleged suicide attempt, and said the fact Tracey could not remember the date of the attempt made it impossible to verify via hospital records.
Among the other defence witnesses - 18 have been called so far - was electricity industry veteran Ronald Beatty. He analysed the power usage at Polkinghorne’s home in Remuera over the two years leading up to Hanna’s death, a longer period than the Crown electricity expert, whose analysis Beatty suggested was over too short a period to establish trends and relied on some flawed assumptions. Beatty found the data supported Polkinghorne’s version of events, that he rose around 6am to switch the lights on and read for a while before coming downstairs and switching on the toaster and kettle before finding his wife dead in the entranceway. He also concluded, contrary to the prosecution expert, that the washing machine and dryer could not have run on the morning of April 5, when Hanna was reported dead. Police found a top sheet missing from the bed Hanna was said to have slept in, and a slightly damp top sheet was found in the dryer.
Many of the others called by the defence have been lay witnesses speaking about what they observed of Polkinghorne and Hanna. Several of his former colleagues said he was an excellent ophthalmologist who they enjoyed working with and who was so committed to his patients he would sometimes waive his surgeon’s fee if they could not afford a procedure. Others described Hanna as stressed and overworked in her Covid role in the leadup to her death.
The jury has also heard from Robert John Willis, Polkinghorne’s former accountant, who gave lengthy and at times dense evidence of the series of trusts and companies used by the defendant and his wife. He said it was a standard sort of arrangement used by people to protect their assets and insulate their properties from the risks inherent in a trading company. Polkinghorne was not employed directly by Auckland Eye, instead consulting via a company that was paid by the practice. Willis said he had identified errors in some of the account statements relied on by police forensic accountant Magaret Skilton. He had not sought to correct the errors as police never contacted him or asked for a statement, he said. Willis said he met with Polkinghorne sometime in 2023 to discuss the Skilton report.
The defence then called Andrew McGregor, a mechanical engineer who runs Prosolve Ltd, a firm specialising in forensic investigative engineering services including air crash investigation. McGregor was asked by the defence to simulate the arrangement Polkinghorne said his wife used to hang herself.
Justice Graham Lang suppressed the bulk of his evidence on the grounds that publication of a detailed description of the purported suicide method could endanger public safety. But the Judge did allow the fact of the simulation to be reported, along with his findings. He said all of the four simulations he conducted using the method Polkinghorne described could have created enough force to cause death.
Auckland Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock suggested the number of variables at play rendered the simulation meaningless. “Do you understand ... the theoretical possibility of this is not an issue?” she asked. He also confirmed the arrangement he used relied entirely on the description of the setup provided by Polkinghorne to police on April 5.
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.
The trial was set to last for six weeks but will now extend beyond that, as we enter the last day of the sixth week today, with more witnesses still to be called.
Mansfield emphasised during his lengthy address last 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.
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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.
