After nine weeks spanning three calendar months, jurors in the strange and salacious – and more often than not riveting – Philip Polkinghorne murder trial returned a not guilty verdict this afternoon.
It took 10 hours of closed-door discussions for the group to reach its decision regarding the 71-year-old Auckland eye surgeon, who had been accused of fatally strangling wife Pauline Hanna, 63, and staging the scene inside their Remuera home to look like a suicide.
Jurors were tasked with sifting through the evidence of more than 80 Crown and defence witnesses whose individual trips to the witness box in the High Court at Auckland spanned from 10 minutes to four days.
Of the roughly dozen reporters from all major New Zealand media outlets who attended the trial, nearly half were sent by NZME and the Herald. Between three and five Herald journalists followed the trial each day and generated more than 100 reports, focusing on live updates, twice daily summaries of the proceedings, a podcast, columns and longer form stories yet to come. Put together, the reports make the most comprehensive publically available review of the case to date.
Here’s a look back at how the trial progressed. Just click into the link and you can read the midday and evening wraps of what happened each of day, along with an opinion piece from Steve Braunias.
