things.”
At the end of Monday’s proceedings, the judge informed Susan that she would allow her just one more day to question her son. She refused to bend even as Susan demanded to continue for “as much time as it takes to get to the truth.” Susan would have to finish her cross-examination by 5 PM Tuesday.
The following day, Susan escalated her attack, engaging the prosecutor in a number of heated exchanges.
Before Gabriel even took the stand that morning, Susan accused Sequeira of “making faces” in the courtroom. She claimed the prosecutor was rolling his eyes at jurors to imply that her cross-examination of her son was tedious.
“I can’t freeze my face,” Sequeira replied dryly, remarking that he had an expressive face.
Judge Brady intervened, telling Susan that she had not seen any “eye-rolling” on the part of the prosecutor, only a look of fatigue when Sequeira briefly shut his eyes in court.
“He is goading me,” Susan complained, talking over the prosecutor as he tried to defend against her latest accusation.
When he finally got the floor, Sequeira charged that Susan was making a “farce” of the trial with her unending objections, demands for a mistrial and accusations of prosecutorial misconduct “every fifteen minutes,” and he implored the judge to revoke Susan’s right to represent herself in court.
“We have gone far beyond the pale of what is reasonable,” he said, after jurors were cleared from the courtroom. “This jury, God knows what they’re thinking now.”
Even the court reporter voiced complaints about Susan’s behavior in court that day, at one point rising from her chair and telling the judge that it was impossible to record the proceedings with Susan repeatedly talking over the witness. When she complained a second time, Susan instructed the judge to “admonish the court reporter!”
Sequeira froze in disbelief. He had never seen anyone instruct a judge to reprimand a member of the court staff. But Brady remained calm, giving Susan more latitude until she, too, reached her limit and threatened to revoke Susan’s
“The jury is getting forgotten in this equation,” Brady warned. “This pattern of behavior that we seem to be going through is alienating the jury.”
“The defendant’s style in this case is to be passive-aggressive,” Sequeira roared, accusing Susan of slyly introducing evidence in the pretext of questions. “She flouts this court’s authority at every opportunity so that it makes this trial somewhat of a farce.”
“Objection, your honor,” Susan yelled out. In a lawyerly tone, she informed the prosecutor that she was objecting to him raising his voice during his “diatribe” and for taking “inappropriate personal potshots” at her.
“Maybe he should start acting like a lawyer instead of being a baby,” she goaded.
It was an amusing quip and one that underscored the increasingly hostile relationship between Sequeira and Polk. For days now, Susan had been inciting direct arguments with the prosecutor, and Brady had done little to stop it. Like two siblings who loathe the sight of each other, they bickered back and forth instead of trying the case. In what was becoming the most entertaining aspect of the trial, Sequeira was routinely drawn into arguments with Susan. While her repeated objections were quite disruptive, it was surprising that she was so successful in eliciting a reaction from the seasoned lawyer.
The more she interrupted the court, the more it seemed that her actions were part of some coherent strategy, not just idle comments meant to annoy the prosecutor. While her behavior was clearly ruffling his feathers, it was also distracting him from his arguments and disrupting the flow of discussion for the jury. Perhaps looking back on Sequeira’s case during their deliberations, the jury would become confused by seemingly inconsequential and incomplete testimony. If intentional, this strategy’s effectiveness would not be known for months, but one thing was certain: by reacting to Susan, Sequeira was playing right into her hand, allowing her to dictate the pace and manner in which the case was progressing.
During the afternoon questioning, Susan probed Gabriel about his relationship with Marjorie and Dan Briner, his surrogate parents since Felix’s death.
“I consider myself their foster child,” Gabe told his mother. “I consider them my parents.”
Gabe’s remarks clearly rattled Susan. She immediately objected to his characterization, insisting that Gabe was not a foster child, as that term is legally defined.
“I am doing extremely well now,” Gabe next told Susan.
Fueled with rage, Susan sought to paint the Briners as greedy individuals who were trying to cash in on her son’s circumstances. She claimed that they held Gabe back in high school so that they could continue to collect social security benefits. “Isn’t it so that if you hadn’t been held back a year at school, your Social Security benefits would have ended when you turned eighteen?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Gabe said, holding back tears.
Gabe told the court that initially he gave the Briners his entire twelve hundred dollar Social Security check. More recently, he paid half the money to help cover his room and board.
As the day wore on, Susan grew more and more confrontational. She demanded yes or no answers from her son and continued to pursue topics that were irrelevant to the murder case. Disturbingly, she grilled him about his alleged hatred of Felix.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to ‘gut him’?” Susan asked tearfully.
“No, God no, I never said that.”
“Didn’t you express absolute hatred of your father?”
“I’ve made mistakes. I have to live with that,” he said, anxiously rubbing his forehead. “It’s not easy that he’s dead, that I can’t say I’m sorry.”
It was just before 5 PM when Gabriel Polk finally rose from the witness chair and waved good-bye to jurors. “See you later,” he said, exiting the courtroom.
“I call for a mistrial!” Susan shouted, citing her son’s banter with the jury.
On Wednesday, the crowd in the gallery had dwindled for Sequeria’s second witness, former Orinda Police Chief Dan Lawrence. The prosecutor had rearranged his witness list to accommodate Adam Polk’s vacation plans. He would call Susan’s eldest son later in the trial and forge ahead with testimony from members of law enforcement.
Lawrence, who was now the chief of a neighboring police department, was called to testify to the phone call he received from Felix Polk one week before his murder. During the call, Felix claimed that Susan had “threatened to blow his head off.”
Sequeira’s examination of Lawrence lasted just five minutes, however, Susan kept the law enforcement officer on the stand for more than one hour, arguing that Lawrence was an expert on police protocol and had expertise on domestic abuse cases. It seemed she was anxious to introduce jurors to the idea that victims of domestic abuse don’t always report incidents to police, thus explaining why she had not reported the alleged abuse she now claimed occurred throughout her marriage.
“Isn’t it true that women who are victims of domestic abuse back out, get scared, fail to appear, and make bad witnesses?” Susan asked Lawrence.
The police chief agreed, saying that Susan’s scenario was possible.
Seemingly pleased with Lawrence’s response, she next asked him why her husband wasn’t prosecuted for his knowledge of underage drinking parties at the Miner Road house. She also wanted him to explain how Felix’s influence with people in high places might have spared him from being charged.
Lawrence was unable to answer many of Susan’s questions, including a number that stemmed from a letter she wrote to Moraga police complaining about their search of her home after Eli’s arrest on felony assault charges. The letter alleged that officers had roughed her up, handcuffed her, and threatened to tear her house apart, thus coloring her perception of the police department and leaving her distrustful of law enforcement officers.
Susan argued that it was her mistrust of police that caused her to flee to Montana—instead of reporting Felix’s murderous threats to authorities. She wanted to introduce her “state of mind” through Chief Lawrence. Susan had sent him a copy of the letter and was anxious to introduce it into evidence.
