Professor Robert MacCulloch: The Polkingham murder trial

Should Crown Prosecutions at the Ministry of Justice be prosecuted for wasting millions of taxpayers $ on a murder trial doomed from the start?

Since public comments on active trials run the risk of biasing juries, reporting on cases is restricted. Although this Blog was written whilst the Polkingham trial was in its first weeks, we were not able to release it then. Now restrictions no longer apply - the jury has given its verdict. So here goes.

In the first days of this mega-buck trial, the Crown Prosecutor's own experts testified it was equally probable death could've occurred by suicide, or murder.

Amazingly, the Herald's court reporters wrote, "two NZ pathologists who estimate they've done 14,000 post-mortem examinations .. spent the majority of yesterday in the witness box at Philip Polkingham's ongoing murder trial. But by the end of the day, jurors were left with few definitive answers other than an admittedly vague agreed-upon cause of Pauline Hanna's death: neck compression. The mechanism of the 63-year-old’s fatal neck compression might've been suicide by hanging, or she might have been strangled with hands or a ligature, Doctors Kilek Kesha & Martin Sage reckoned".

Have you ever heard of a murder trial in which the Crown Prosecutor presents evidence from their own witnesses declaring one cannot say with any certainty at all, let alone "beyond reasonable doubt", that a murder has even occurred?
From that moment, the trial was over. The Prosecution proved the Defense's argument in its first days. Having established a 50-50 chance of murder or suicide, the case then descended into character assassination. The Crown launched defamatory attack after defamatory attack, describing in excruciating detail both the victim's and defendants' personal lives. It dragged both of their names through the mud. The media gulped it up - seizing on every opportunity to smear the conservative National Party types living in posh Auckland suburbs.

Why was the trial ever brought when you don't need to have studied law (like me) to know "equally probable" is not "beyond reasonable doubt"? A little statistics knowledge is enough for that distinction. Why were millions wasted on court time in a cost-of-living crisis? Why was the prosecution paid for months in court when its strategy descended into a prudish attack on a defendant's personal life? What are Auckland's Big Law Firms doing? They've come close to collapsing NZ over the Treaty, sucking money from those disputes at every chance. They've begun writing letters threatening defamation on those of us writing about monopolies. Now they've found a new activity: squandering tax-payer cash on prosecutions that should've never been brought. The only winnings in this case come from the fees of the lawyers. Its another reason why productivity growth is zero in NZ. The Crown Prosecutors should be held to account & put on the dock themselves, for wasting a nation's time and money.

Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.