Hakyung Lee. Photo: Lawrence Smith/ Stuff Pool
An expert witness in the trial of a mother accused of murdering her children has changed her opinion through Crown cross examination in court on Thursday.
Hakyung Lee is on trial at the High Court at Auckland, accused of murdering her children, Minu and Yuna Jo, and hiding their bodies in suitcases.
She is representing herself in court along with two standby counsel, Lorraine Smith and Chris Wilkinson-Smith.
Lee admitted causing her children's deaths and putting their remains in suitcases in storage, but argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the murders, following a "descent into madness" after the death of her husband Ian Jo from cancer late 2017.
On Wednesday, jurors heard from the defence's only witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr Yvette Kelly.
She had said early in her evidence Lee met the criteria to be found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
The law specified someone could not be convicted of an offense if they had a disease of the mind and either did not understand what they were doing, or did not understand what they were doing was morally wrong.
Kelly had found Lee fell into the latter category.
"It was because she didn't know it was morally wrong. Her thoughts were such at the time that she thought the act was the right thing to do by her children."
Lee told Kelly she changed her name from Ji Eun Lee to Hakyung Lee to "erase" every part of herself.
"She just hated herself so much that she wanted to be a different person, and part of that was changing her name," Kelly said.
Kelly was cross examined by Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker.
Walker asked if Kelly ever thought about the possibility Lee was lying to her, to which the psychiatrist answered an emphatic yes.
"We're not lie detectors, right, and psychiatrists, as much as we might like to think it, evidence is that we're not really much better than the average person at detecting lies," Kelly said.
"That's why we rely on some tests and we rely on the clinical picture."
Kelly said there was some information Lee told her had sufficient depth for her to believe it, and other times where it did not mount up.
Walker pointed out, Lee had given mismatched accounts of details surrounding the murders in the past, like how she originally denied murdering the children, or that she did not have them in the first place.
"Do you see the difficulty with relying with her accounts overtime? They're not very reliable are they?" Walker asked.
"I accept that," said Kelly, "But her description of wanting to suicide was very consistent with everything she had said before."
"All of those things you have to put together and try and work out what really happened."
The Crown pointed to a trip Lee made on 27 June 2018 to the post office. At the time the Crown said Minu and Yuna Jo were at home playing on the PlayStation.
Lee bought an envelope and a courier to Wellington from the same post office, Walker said.
Walker said Lee had filled out an application to change her name, and had it witnessed by a Justice of the Peace.
"We've heard banking evidence that this was received by the Department of Internal Affairs the following morning," she said.
Walker said the jury would be invited to infer that Lee at some point before going to the post office, had gone to a Justice of the Peace to have her name change application witnessed.
"Otherwise, you wouldn't send the application before getting the Justice of the Peace to witness it," Walker said.
Walker suggested that at the time Lee went to the JP, then the post office to get the courier, she was thinking about changing her name before ever killing her children.
She went on to talk about Lee going to Mitre 10 the same day to buy two lots of wheelie bin liners, garden bags, and duct tape - materials the Crown said she used to wrap the children and conceal the suitcases that hid their remains.
"This also looks a little, doesn't it, like she's possibly gone to Mitre 10 having submitted her application to change her name, and she's taken her packaging home including duct tape and black bags," Walker said.
Walker suggested it was some point after that, Lee returned home and gave the children the anti-depressant drug used to kill them.
Kelly was then taken through the events of the following days, Lee going to a hair salon, getting a new driver's licence with her new name, culminating in when the Crown said she stored the children in a Safe Store locker three days after their death.
Kelly was asked after all this she still believed Lee was suffering from a "disease of the mind that prevented her from knowing what she was doing was morally wrong".
"I still believe that she had a depression at that time, but I accept that she knew the moral wrongfulness of that," she said.
"I think the planning around it was concerning."
Kelly said she would have to rethink "the whole thing" knowing the timing of the children's death and when Lee purchased the materials she wrapped them in, if she were to revise her conclusion.
Walker asked Kelly if the timing made it not look like the murders were not an "altruistic act" to save the children the horror of finding her having committed suicide, as Walker said Lee's account to Kelly had been, but instead a "selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting on her own."
"I can't comment on what her rational was, but it is certainly damning," Kelly said.
The forensic psychiatrist is expected to face more questions when court resumes on Friday.
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