Day 1 of the coronial inquiry of the century, the sequel to the legal trial of the century, was held on Monday morning in an obscure nook of Newmarket the place events gathered to look at the matter of the loss of life of Pauline Hanna. Essentially the most fascinating celebration was Dr Philip Polkinghorne. He entered the courtroom in disguise, with a thick scarf masking his face; it solely emphasised the theatrical strangeness of the person accused of murdering his spouse and located not responsible. He seemed like a type of phantom of the opera.
The most recent manufacturing within the Polkinghorne affair is about in a chilled Ministry of Justice courtroom on the second ground above an deserted Irish pub and beneath Go Vehicles Finance. It’s on a side-street off the decrease finish of Khyber Move Rd, in an Asian restaurant district; there are at all times cigarette butts on the pavement exterior noodle joint Nan Xin. The panelling motif behind the coroner resembles teardrops or udders. It was onerous to know whether or not to cry or moo.
Pauline died on April 5, 2020. She was 63. Her brother Bruce Hanna introduced in a framed {photograph} of Pauline and positioned it in entrance of the courtroom. She seemed radiant.
Polkinghorne sat subsequent to his attorneys Ron Mansfield and Michael Timmins. All bald males look alike and from behind their three shining skulls made them seem like unhappy outdated triplets. As if to mock them, Polkinghorne’s sister Ruth modelled a superb head of untamed hair. Alysha McClintock appeared for the Crown, as she did on the Excessive Court docket trial that everybody remembers she misplaced, and he or she launched two cops who gave proof on the Excessive Court docket; the three losers all seemed very decided.
A way of a reunion was additional established by the line-up of the women and gents of the press, all veterans from the Excessive Court docket epic. Craig Kapitan from NZME and Cat Owen from Stuff had been there. If a legal trial happens, and neither Craig or Cat report it, it doesn’t make a sound. I used to be there. Mark McNeill, who made a light-hearted documentary concerning the trial, was there. Herald legend Carolyne Meng-Yee was there however solely in spirit, with everybody laughing at her sometimes good report concerning the inquest in Monday’s paper; she had interviewed Polkinghorne’s ex-lover and hooker of alternative, Madison Ashton, who talked about attending a masked ball within the Palace of Versailles the place visitors included Kanye West “dressed like a gimp”. Deliver out the gimp! Traditional Meng-Yee, and basic Polkinghorne-adjacent copy.
It was a brief listening to. It lasted 91 minutes. “No particular person is on trial,” the Coroner instructed the courtroom. “There isn’t a prosecution. There isn’t a defence. There isn’t a burden of proof.” As such there’s a lovely purity a few coronial inquest; it takes out the warmth and noise, resists narratives and story-telling. The primary part of the inquest will focus solely on Pauline’s explanation for loss of life.
Identical to the trial, although, the central query stays the identical: whether or not the loss of life was self-inflicted, or, as McClintock put it actually slightly delicately in her opening tackle, “was it an act completed to her by one other?” Her query was rhetorical. “The police place factors towards loss of life by the hands of one other.” McClintock had learn the memo. The courtroom’s lovely purity prevented her from accusing and even naming this mysterious “one other” by identify.
And but Mansfield, in his opening tackle, got here out roaring, as if nonetheless in courtroom 11 on the Excessive Court docket of Auckland. He’s a creature of behavior—as ever, he tore by a Gala apple in courtroom, lowering it to a shrivelled core—and at all times takes the identical climate with him, shouting in a tempest. He yelled, “What we’ve seen from my realized good friend’s elongated opening tackle to you is the continued obsession by the New Zealand Police based mostly on their subjective view of Dr Polkinghorne and his life-style!” And: “We should be very cautious on this listening to {that a} fascination with somebody’s life-style doesn’t drive and inflict this listening to!” Additionally, variously, “Ethical judgment … fixation … prejudice!” He was dancing a livid little foxtrot, however the music was all in his head. McClintock had made zero point out of Polkinghorne’s “life-style”. Nothing about hookers. Nothing about intercourse. Nothing about threesomes, foursomes or moresomes.
Pauline’s brother Bruce Hanna supplied probably the most beautiful second of Monday’s listening to when he stated, very loudly, “The elephant is within the room!” He had pinned a white ribbon manufactured from metallic on his shirt, simply as he wore it on daily basis of the trial as an eloquent assertion about males’s violence towards girls. He held a sheet of A4 in his hand. It shook. The Coroner invited him to maneuver from the general public gallery to a desk in entrance of courtroom so he may unfold out his paperwork. “I simply have one doc, ma’am,” he stated. His assertion was not merely from the guts however ripped from the guts. “That horrible day she died was the worst day of my life … I imagine Philip John Polkinghorne was on medication that evening … The reality is there. It’s at all times been there … Please expose the elephant!”
All eyes turned to Polkinghorne, that tiny elephant, that not very mysterious “one other”.
