WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT 

The trial of Philip Polkinghorne, the Remuera eye surgeon accused of killing his wife and staging the scene to look like a suicide, will not sit today. 

The court emailed media shortly before 9am to say the trial would not sit on Thursday but would resume as usual at 10am tomorrow. 

No reason was given by the court for the fact the trial is not sitting today. 

The Herald is unable to report discussions between the lawyers and the Judge which happen in chambers in the absence of the jury. 

Yesterday, the trial finished early. Ron Mansfield KC had been cross-examining police digital forensic analyst Jun Lee, a surprise last-minute police witness. 

The jury heard he had taken the cross examination as far as he could without seeking further advice. The Crown case was set to conclude today. 

After the Crown finishes its case, Mansfield will open the defence case then begin calling witnesses to support the contention Hanna hanged herself following years of intermittent depression and suicidal thoughts, and amid huge work stress. 

Lee is the last of about 60 Crown witnesses and was a surprise addition to the prosecution’s lineup. 

He was called in at the 11th hour to address an assertion in cross examination by Mansfield that Hanna’s phone had been used to draft two unsent messages about 4am on the day of her death, to her husband and the daughter of a family friend. 

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• Polkinghorne trial: Phone records show aborted 4am mystery messages on day of wife's death

Lee said the logs the defence IT expert used to come to this conclusion were from an automatic lookup process that occurs in the background without the phone being used, as part of its security processes. 

He said that if the phone had actually been used to draft a message, there would be logs showing it had been picked up and unlocked. Those logs were missing, he said. As a result, Lee said it was a straightforward analysis to confirm the phone was not used again by Hanna after 10.47pm. 

Justice Lang told the jury yesterday after an initial cross examination that the trial was finishing early for the day for Mansfield to consult his defence IT expert on further questions. 

There has been one notable omission from witnesses called by the Crown - Australian escort Madison Ashton, with whom the ophthalmologist developed a years-long relationship. 

She was mentioned many times in evidence, and texts she exchanged with Polkinghorne in the days after his wife’s death ranging from loving to testy were repeatedly read to the jury. 

Ashton’s name was among those read out to potential jurors at the start of the trial. The nine women and three men who will decide this case have not been told why she was a no-show. 

Earlier on Wednesday, Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Allan, the officer in charge of the case, said police obtained a warrant shortly after Hanna’s death on April 5 to intercept Polkinghorne’s calls. 

Among those calls was one on April 8 to pathologist Rexson Tse, two days after Kilak Kesha conducted the autopsy for the police. Just as the recording was about to be played to the jury, Auckland Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock raised a legal issue, and it was not played. 

Before that, Mansfield said the Polkinghorne home had panic buttons in both the master and guest bedrooms upstairs, where Hanna and Polkinghorne slept respectively on the night of April 4. But it appears police made no note of that beyond recording the written statement of an Auckland Eye worker who stayed at the home, who mentioned the button. 

The prosecution alleged Polkinghorne lied in the letter to his wife where he said he was spending a few days over Christmas 2019 at a retreat course in Auckland called “moving on and up”, during which he told Hanna he wouldn’t be able to reply to her messages. Police secured records from Customs showing he flew to Sydney while she was at what was meant to be their family Christmas at their Ring’s Beach bach. At the time, Ashton was based out of Sydney. 

Another new piece of evidence to emerge from Allan’s time in the witness box was that meth cost about $350 per gram in Auckland in 2019 meaning the 37g found in Polkinghorne’s home would have been worth roughly $13,000, not taking into account any wholesale discounts. 

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.