Authors: Catherine Crier
Still, the detective maintained that he did not see “two right feet.”
Unwavering, Susan pointed to blood found on the soles of Felix’s feet and inquired as to why investigators hadn’t found any bloody footprints from him on the floor of the living room.
“There was nothing in this case that led me to believe that this scene had been staged,” Costa huffed.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Susan learned that Costa was asking to leave the trial so that he could refill a medical prescription for an unspecified condition. Although she had been questioning him for two full days, she insisted that she needed one more day to complete her cross-examination. Susan recommended that Costa have the prescription called in to a local pharmacy.
The detective complained, saying he didn’t feel he should have to do that. He also pointed out that the questions she was now posing were out of his area of expertise and would be better answered by a criminalist.
Despite Costa’s argument, the judge told him to contact his doctor about phoning in the prescription so that Susan could continue the cross-examination.
“Well, what’s his condition?” Susan demanded, after the matter was resolved.
“It’s completely irrelevant,” the judge told her.
“I think it’s relevant, I mean, is he on psych meds?”
“It’s a physical condition,” the prosecutor jumped in. Sequeira was anxious to move the case along to accommodate the out of town witnesses he had waiting to testify.
“Is it visual?” Susan wanted to know.
“It’s totally irrelevant and I don’t want her to make references to it in front of the jury,” Sequeira told Judge Brady.
“I had no intention of doing that, but now I’m curious. This
IS
a deviant prosecutor,” Susan charged.
Her remark elicited laughter from the gallery.
“All right, that’s it,” Judge Brady warned. “We’re done. Ladies and gentlemen of the gallery, this is not for entertainment.
“Mrs. Polk, there will be no mention of this issue in front of the jury.”
By Friday afternoon, Sequeira was asking Judge Brady for help. “I’m at my wits end,” he announced. “At this point, it’s becoming absurd. She won’t follow the rules. She won’t stop interrupting. I don’t know what else to do. I’m asking the court for guidance.”
Finally, Sequeira tried helping his opponent. Susan kept questioning about a March 16, 2001, letter in which she alleged domestic violence. The judge had ruled the letter inadmissible when offered through the detective but explained that Susan could enter it later during her own testimony.
During a break, Sequeira offered Susan advice on how to question the detective about the letter. “You can ask him if they investigated claims made in the letter.”
“I understand your point,” Susan replied. “But the jury has to see the letter to understand what I’m referring to.”
“Ms. Polk, for the fifth time, he cannot testify to the contents of that document,” Brady told Susan. “Move on please.” Sequeira just shrugged.
Susan was now completely on her own at the defense table, having fired her case assistant, Valerie Harris, the previous afternoon. She did not provide Harris a reason for her second dismissal since the trial began.
Harris later told reporters that Susan simply said, “I think I have to do this alone.” Those close to the case later learned that Susan was angry that Harris had given her dog away after Eli was arrested and incarcerated at the same detention center as his mother. She could find no one to care for Dusty.
Having Harris off the case would present additional challenges for Sequeira. The prosecutor had been using Harris as a middleman after citing his unwillingness to deal directly with Susan. He would later admit that trying the case against Susan was extremely challenging—something he would have been ill-equipped to handle as a younger man.
Meanwhile, Susan would also suffer. Valerie had been selecting Susan’s clothing for court each day. The chore was not without its challenges. On days that Susan didn’t like the outfit, she would refuse to get dressed. Now, she would have no one to bring her clothes and came to court in prison attire. Court watchers remarked that even in jail garb Susan still managed to look elegant. She had a natural flair for making sweat pants and a T-shirt look stylish.
O
n Tuesday, April 5, the prosecutor called former Contra Costa criminalist Song Wicks to the stand. Wicks had collected and evaluated evidence at the Miner Road crime scene on the night of October 15, 2002. He testified that he found Felix Polk’s body splayed on the tile floor of the couple’s guesthouse when he arrived at the crime scene that night. When Sequeira brought up Susan’s accusations that he and other members of the sheriff ’s department had moved furniture to bolster their theory of the homicide, Wicks scoffed indignantly.
“Who had the most time to spend at the crime scene—the detectives, the criminalists, or the defendant?” Prosecutor Sequeira asked Wicks.
“The defendant.”
“Would your job have been made easier if you had the defendant’s bloody clothing?”
“Objection!” Susan shouted from the defense table. She was quickly overruled by the judge.
“It could have allowed me to draw conclusions, if I had the defendant’s clothing,” Wicks said over a second objection from Susan.
Anxious to get the query out before Susan could object again, Sequeira shouted his next question. “Did you find any bloody clothing anywhere?”
“No,” the investigator replied.
Judge Brady interrupted. “Mr. Sequeira, I am not hard of hearing. Please moderate your tone.”
“Sorry,” the prosecutor apologized, glaring at Susan, who sat grinning at the defense table.
“I’d like to just finish without you interrupting,” he told her after she voiced yet another objection. But Susan continued, claiming a conspiracy.
By late Wednesday, Sequeira had regained his sense of humor and was mockingly referring to Susan as “Madame Defendant.”
“The sarcasm can be done without,” Susan scolded. “Ms. Polk is fine.”
During her cross-examination of Song Wicks, Susan accused the criminalist of plotting to frame her for her husband’s murder and claimed that he and some thirteen other law enforcement officials were responsible for dousing water on Felix’s bloody head to “create a more dramatic photo opportunity.” Once again, she brought up the ottoman, accusing Wicks of having moved furniture at the crime scene. Addressing the bloody footprints, Susan went a step farther than she had with Detective Costa, suggesting that Wicks or other officers on the scene that first night took a shoe from her bedroom closet and “stamped” footprints into the blood encircling Felix’s head to further implicate her in the homicide.
Wicks shot Susan an incredulous look.
“When you frame someone for murder, you don’t think you are going to have to come up with an explanation, do you?” Susan retaliated.
“I don’t know,” the officer shot back. “I have never framed anyone for murder.”
Wicks agreed with the prosecutor’s charge that a person who defended herself against an armed attacker wouldn’t need to dispose of her bloody clothes—as Susan had allegedly done.
When forensic pathologist Brian Peterson took the stand, Susan levied similar accusations at him, attempting to show that he too was also a member of the elaborate conspiracy to frame her for Felix’s murder. “You have a bias to produce evidence for the prosecutor, isn’t that correct,” she asked the pathologist when he took the stand later that week. She went on to insinuate that he was paid by the Contra Costa Sheriff ’s Department to render results favorable to the county.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Dr. Peterson balked. “Everybody is paid by somebody.” He insisted the sheriff ’s department would have to be “stupid” to try and force him to alter his findings.
Peterson said the stab wounds found on Felix’s hands, arms, and feet were the result of the victim trying to defend himself from a knife-wielding attacker. “There might be times when you want to get your feet between you and the blade,” he explained. “Otherwise, it’s pretty hard to get wounds on the bottom of your feet.”
When asked by Sequeira if the wound on Felix’s head was the result of falling or getting “whacked,” Dr. Peterson said, “I believe it was more consistent with being hit with something.” This statement directly contradicted Susan’s claim that Felix had struck his head on the tile floor when he fell backward shortly before his death. According to Peterson, there was no medical evidence to support Susan’s purported chain of events, and instead, he reiterated his opinion that Felix’s wounds to the head were the result of being hit rather than a fall.
In addition, Peterson and Susan differed on the subject of what had actually killed Felix. While his post-mortem examination revealed that Felix suffered from advanced heart disease that could have played a role in weakening his ability to stave off an attack, he testified that Felix Polk died as a result of stab wounds to his stomach, lungs, and the area close to his heart—not heart disease. Susan, on the contrary, maintained that Felix’s injuries from the knife were not life threatening and that his death was the result of a heart attack he suffered while aggressively assaulting her in the guest house that night. In order to support her views, Susan intended to call another forensic pathologist to challenge Peterson’s testimony when it was her turn to present evidence.
Over the course of the trial, Susan had worked diligently to discredit Felix’s professional reputation. On March 27, Neil Kobrin, the clinical psychologist and former president of Argosy University, was called by the prosecutor to testify about a phone call he received from Felix in the days before his murder.
“He [Felix] said that his wife, Susan, was going to kill him and that he was at a hotel hiding out,” Kobrin told the court. He also said that Felix told him that Susan had a gun.
Susan responded by raising allegations that ranged from Felix’s supposed affair with his patient turned colleague, to cocaine abuse. She
pushed Kobrin to acknowledge that he was aware of Felix’s many indiscretions. Unfortunately for Susan, Kobrin could not substantiate the claims.
Once Kobrin’s testimony had concluded, only one witness remained before the prosecution would rest its case. On Tuesday, April 17, Adam Polk took the stand, ready to face his mother for the first time in several years.
Sitting on the witness stand with thick curly brown hair and a soft, cherubic face, Adam told the court that his father did not abuse his mother, while also shooting down Susan’s claim that Felix had threatened to kill her during their marriage.
Adam’s testimony for the prosecution lasted just thirty minutes.
But the well-spoken college senior would be on the stand for three days responding to questions from his mother, and it did not take long for the twenty-three-year-old’s testimony to degenerate into a family therapy session gone haywire.
“Do you recall saying that you would come into court and say the worst possible things about me unless I give you irrevocable power of attorney?”
Adam told his mother, “You’re a cruel, heartless person and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
Susan presented her son with the letter he wrote for her bail hearing in which he called his mother “a gentle and intellectual mother who enjoyed movies, cooking, and baking cookies.”
Adam testified that he wrote the letter to win her favor and gain the use of Susan’s car. He also claimed that the letter was “intended to manipulate Eli into giving me access to you.”
“I was in a precarious position for mediating for my two minor brothers’ financial future,” Adam continued.
Susan’s eldest son admitted that he had promised his mother he would testify at her trial “if she called him.” But Adam claimed that he never agreed to take sides. He would simply tell the truth, which Susan assumed would be in her favor.
Like Gabriel, Adam denied his mother’s claims of spousal abuse, calling Susan “bonkers” and “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” during her questioning
of him. Judge Brady, usually reserved, covered her mouth and fought back a smile during the bruising exchange.
Later, he recalled that Susan broke down in tears when he first went to visit her in jail two days after her arrest. “What happened?” he asked his mother. To which she replied, “Things just got out of control.” Adam testified that Susan then said, “you can have everything, I’m just going to plead guilty.”
He said his mother had a change of heart after she learned that she was being charged with first-degree murder after stabbing Felix twenty-seven times. Adam claimed that his mother said that she had not stabbed her husband that many times and was convinced she was being set up.
“They might as well execute me because I’m being framed for murder,” Susan allegedly told Adam at the jail that day.
During the heated cross-examination, Susan repeatedly brought up unfavorable incidents from Adam’s past in an attempt to discredit his testimony, at one point calling him “a bar room brawler.” Adam sat twirling a marker and staring at the ceiling as Susan once again played the fifteen-minute audiotape of his father telling an audience about his alleged sexual abuse by a satanic cult while a toddler in day care.
Pressing the stop button on the tape recorder, Susan asked her son if he thought that she “put those ideas in his father’s head.”
“I don’t think it’s a huge leap, that it’s outside the realm of possibility.”
On Thursday, after three days of questioning, Susan was informed that this would be her last day of cross-examination. Frustrated, Susan resumed her questioning of Adam over his father’s daily treatment of her, but as the day wore on, Susan’s time was running out, and she angrily complained about the “unfair” constraints. Still, she continued to ask him about topics that Brady had ruled inadmissible or irrelevant.
At 4:15 that afternoon, the prosecutor requested an adjournment. “Your honor, I’m feeling quite faint, can we take a break for the day?” It was not clear if Sequeira was ill or if he had just had enough of Susan’s courtroom antics.
“I think we can get a little more out of this witness,” the judge replied, signaling Susan to proceed.