Police 'intoxicated' with Polkinghorne's drug use, relationships – defence

Philip Polkinghorne's defence team has begun its case in his murder trial, telling jurors there's no evidence of a crime being committed.

Warning: This article contains content that could be disturbing to some people.

Polkinghorne, 71, denies the Crown's accusation that he killed his wife Pauline Hanna in their Auckland home at Easter 2021 and staged it to look like a suicide. His lawyer Ron Mansfield told the jury this morning the case comes down to "murder 101".

"You don't need a motive if a crime hasn't been committed, and you don't need a motive if there has been no murder," he said.

Mansfield stood in front of the jurors, addressing them directly at the High Court in Auckland.

Shortly before, Polkinghorne walked into court with supporters — his family — for the first time since the trial started in late July.

"You might want to give some thought about what you actually know of him [rather] than allowing you to be distracted, or intoxicated like the police were, about drug use and relationships outside of the [marital] unit," Mansfield said.

He told jurors police should have "stood back" because there was no evidence at all of culpable homicide.

Police were seeking to prove a crime that hadn't happened, he added.

The defence has always maintained Polkinghorne woke up on April 5, 2021, and found his wife already dead by suicide.

The trial, in its opening stages, heard about police carrying out a so-called tension test on a rope.

In his opening, Mansfield cast judgement against a "relatively junior officer who fails to report anything he's doing".

"Suddenly everything looks suspicious, he does this tension check, he doesn't record it, he doesn't have anyone else record it," he told the jury. "But that sets off the next train of inquiry or investigation because he's thinking 'that wouldn't hold anybody'.

"He hadn't bothered to see what Dr Polkinghorne was saying when he was being interviewed by consent by another officer," he said.

Mansfield told jurors that, while they might be disappointed to find a person like Polkinghorne using meth, it didn't diminish his control.

"There is no evidence he was unable to control his emotions."

As the police investigation dragged on both in time and cost, there was more of a pressing need for a result, Mansfield suggested.

"It's like a junket, it just gets bigger and bigger," he told the jury.

He said there was an "absence of evidence" at the couple's Remuera home of any fatal assault: "But what you do have at the scene is entirely consistent with what Dr Polkinghorne told police when he was interviewed on the 5th, that day."

Polkinghorne had given police a full explanation, Mansfield said.

"And you've had the opportunity to hear the harrowing call by this man seeking help, albeit it was too late."

Mansfield said there was no evidence at the scene or on Hanna's body to show a killing.

"It would have to be a perfect murder. Can I suggest it was not?

"Pauline sadly was — despite all outward appearances, and only known to a few — a high risk for suicide," he said.

He told the jury he would call evidence about whether Hanna was at risk of self harm while on the prescription drugs she was taking.

The court has heard previously it would be drawing links with the weight loss drug Duromine.

Hanna's family is also at court.

Polkinghorne, who often uses a laptop during the trial, had the computer shut and looked at the jury as his lawyer outlined his defence.

Mansfield today urged jurors not to be distracted by a marriage that was not conventional and had outside relationships.

Polkinghorne will not be giving evidence himself in his defence, the jury was told.

Mansfield said that, while Polkinghorne's police interview was not under oath, what he said at the time could not be more reliable.

Mansfield's first witness was Tracey Hanna, Pauline Hanna's sister who lives in London. She began crying recounting an evening decades ago when Pauline Hanna and their mother were having a serious argument in the kitchen.

"It escalated, Pauline was having a very emotional kind of crisis, she was shouting and crying, my mother was crying which was unusual for my mother."

Tracey Hanna said she walked into the kitchen to find out what was going on.

"And then I intervened and I said to her, 'Why are you upsetting mum so badly, this is awful', I was really angry," she told jurors.

"And then she turned her anger onto me ... and then all of a sudden she ..."

At this point Tracey Hanna began crying.

"She said that she tried to kill herself ... and she flashed her arms up at me ... as if to say she'd tried to harm herself," she said.

Tracey Hanna, who is 11 years younger than Pauline, said she was 20 or 21 at the time.

"Of course I should've followed up and looked after her, but if I can give context, I was a very unworldly 21-year-old at the time.

"And in the '80s and '90s in New Zealand we didn't talk about mental health or suicidal ideation, it was all a shameful secret," she said.

"I was completely unqualified to deal with this and I didn't know what to do."

The argument and incident was never mentioned between the sisters again. Tracey Hanna said at a later point Pauline Hanna made a comment about taking pills, which she took to mean her sister was on medication.

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