Steve Braunias: Six weeks of courtroom drama at the Polkinghorne trial

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THREE KEY FACTS
Steve Braunias is an award-winning New Zealand journalist, author, columnist and editor.
OPINION

Nothing else is going on in my life other than the Polkinghorne murder trial. Six weeks of
it, in the swirling, seething hothouse of Courtroom 11 upstairs of the High Court at Auckland on the corner of Waterloo Quadrant and Parliament St in that crisply English end of town – this is original colonialism, a conquering power bringing in its rule of law that we all must live by. Judge Graham Lang is the King’s Judge. Polkinghorne’s defence lawyer Ron Mansfield is King’s Counsel. The two press benches are pauper’s row, where poor scribes snatch at crumbs of scandal – actually I love my job, I love writing daily portraits of this murder trial, which feels so Victorian, so 19th century, so inky and so tabloid, that I write with the spirit of a street corner newsboy who waves a copy of the latest Herald and exhorts EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT. Certainly I want to write all about it.

An expert witness was called to describe the neurological experience of taking methamphetamine. She said it stimulated a profound release of dopamine into the synapse, i.e. it produced fabulous amounts of pleasure. The nation is smoking the Polkinghorne trial through the glass pipe of media coverage and getting really high, intensely happy – it’s a murder trial, a woman is dead, but these past six weeks have given New Zealanders so much excitement and pleasure. Yes, how terrible that it’s become a kind of carnival but times are tough, times are grim, and the trial offers a vast colourful distraction – the accused was a wealthy surgeon having sex with hookers and smoking glass pipes filled with pleasure. What’s not to like? And yet there is a deep and profound sympathy for the woman who has died. This is at the core of the trial. Everything that surrounds it is a thrilling mystery.
Nothing else is going on in the world other than the Polkinghorne murder trial. Trump something something, Kamala something something … I have stopped taking notice of the world and its woes, its significant developments, the rotation of the planet around its axis at a rate of about 1670km/h. The world has stopped spinning. Courtroom 11 is its frozen core. I sit there, ancient and immobile, since the trial began 4.4 billion years ago when the Earth was cooling. Perhaps I need to get out more. I make it as far as the nearby beautiful grounds of Old Government House, and swoon at its arboretum of exotic trees – the tree rhododendron from the Himalayas, the windmill pine from Japan. I took a small branch from the cowtail pine (also known as the Japanese plum tree) back into court the other day, and laid it on the press bench. It looked like a fossil.
Nothing is going on in my life other than the Polkinghorne murder trial. It’s going too far to say I eat it – I eat like royalty at the trial, bringing in wonderful packed lunches such as a bacon and baked bean toasted sandwich – but I have begun to sleep it. Last night I dreamed about it. It had finished. There were a lot of people in court. I recognised the nice lady from Howick, the nice man from Northcote, and another woman who has regularly attended the trial – the public gallery is packed most days; you can smell the methamphetamine – but I don’t know where she is from. It might be Mars. She said to me the other day, “Have you noticed the parallels between Pauline’s death and the death of Marilyn Monroe?” I said: “No.” She said: “There are many. Mark my words!” Anyway she was in the public gallery in my dream, leaving the courtroom. It was over. I felt sad. I collected my notebooks and packed lunch. I have no idea what the verdict was.
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