“He admitted to striking Andy, his son [from his first marriage], and said that’s just the way he was raised,” Eli testified. “He told me his first wife [Sharon Mann] was crazy and delusional, and that’s why they got a divorce.”
The following day, Susan ended her examination and turned the witness over to the prosecutor, but by Friday morning she was demanding a mistrial. Furious at the way Sequeira was cross-examining Eli, she accused the prosecutor of being in cahoots with the judge to discredit the only one of her children to testify on her behalf.
“This is unfair treatment!” Susan said, jumping up at one point to object to Sequeira’s questions about Eli’s criminal past.
“Shame on both of you!” she ranted, directing her anger at both the prosecutor and the judge for their “tricky, nefarious, and devious” actions.
“I fully recognize that watching your son be cross-examined has got to be extremely difficult,” Judge Brady said, adding that the prosecutor’s questions were permissible.
During two days of cross-examination, Sequeira questioned Eli about his run-ins with the police and his on- again off-again relationship with his mother. He intended to poke holes in Eli’s claims that his mother was a victim of abuse, and not a coldhearted killer who stabbed his father in a premeditated rage. Using excerpts from Susan’s diary, Eli’s letters, and his disastrous trip to Paris with Susan when he was a teen, Sequeira stressed the often rocky relationship between mother and son.
Susan’s middle child did little to hide his disdain for the assistant district attorney and the court in which his mother was being tried. His responses to Sequeira’s questions were peppered with sarcasm and he accentuated the word “sir” when he replied to the queries.
With regard to the argument between his parents that had prompted him to strike his mother in the face, Sequeira asked, “Why didn’t you hit the abuser?”
“I don’t know.” Eli replied. He maintained that it was the first time he was ever violent with his mother.
Susan, meanwhile, raised objections when the prosecutor handed her son a copy of the police report that documented another instance of aggression toward his mother. She accused Sequeira of violating the rules of discovery, alleging that he had not provided her with a copy of the report he had just handed Eli. The judge overruled her objection, clearing the way for Sequeira to question Eli about the incident.
The report documented a call to police from Susan after another argument with Eli that turned violent. According to the report, she told police that her son had shoved her out of the house, locked the door, and then took her car without permission.
Eli claimed he couldn’t recall the incident.
Grinning, Sequeira moved on. He next inquired about the fight he had with a fellow teen in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant that resulted in a felony assault charge. Though Eli insisted it was just a “fistfight,” the prosecutor noted that witnesses told police that Eli struck the victim with a flashlight—a claim Eli denied.
“I hit him four or five times,” Eli said.
“You broke his nose and cut his face up pretty good, didn’t you?” Sequeira noted.
“I object!” Susan jumped up yet again. “He’s attempting to interject hearsay information that hasn’t been established.”
“Would you like to see the medical records?” Sequeira smiled, rummaging through the papers on his table.
“He doesn’t even have them!” Susan shot back, watching as the prosecutor fumbled to retrieve the document.
“He’s attempting to confuse and mislead the jury,” Susan complained to Judge Brady out of earshot of jurors, “when the most important part of this young man’s testimony is that his father was violent, and that his father threatened to kill me.”
But Sequeira wasn’t finished with Eli’s rap sheet. There was the October 2003 incident in which he shot a passing motorist with a pellet gun. The bullet lodged inches from the man’s spine.
Eli insisted he struck the man by accident. He wasn’t aiming at anything in particular when he fired the weapon toward the road. “I was sorry. Accidents do happen. That was a terrible one.”
Sequeira also cited the high-speed car chase in which Eli attempted to elude officers, reaching speeds of 130 mph in his attempt to ditch the bag of marijuana he had in his Camaro.
“And then I pulled over,” Eli insisted of the October 2003 incident.
“You had a flat tire.” Sequeira pointed out.
“I was between homes,” Eli protested. “Things were going very badly. I made some mistakes.”
Sequeira also called the jury’s attention to Eli’s troubles in school, noting that he had been suspended from Miramonte High for making racist and homophobic remarks. It was a calculated strategy to portray Susan’s ally as the bad seed. Using Eli’s record against him, Sequeira cast sufficient doubt on his credibility, demonstrating the witness to be an unreliable person whose words were equally unreliable.
Continuing on, Sequeira raised questions about Eli’s allegiance to Susan, pointing out that he seemed to side with his mother when it was convenient. Supporting Sequeira’s claim was Eli’s aborted trip to Paris with his mother, as well as the March 2001 police report in which Eli sided with Felix, telling officers that he witnessed Susan kick his dad during an argument.
“I did what my father told me to do,” Eli defended. He now related that day’s events differently, saying that his father had attacked his mother, shoved her up against the Sub-Zero refrigerator and ordered him to tell police that she had instigated the fight.
Sequeira paused to let jurors digest the information. “And sometimes you do what your mother tells you to do?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you told a third version, too, didn’t you?”
Tossing his hands in the air, Eli blurted out, “I don’t know. I’m lost.”
Striding to the witness box, Sequeira presented the young man with a transcript from a July 2003 conversation with his mother’s former defense investigator in which he claimed that it was his father who kicked his mother that day.
“It seems like there’s been a mistake, a miscommunication,” Eli announced after reading the notes from Susan’s former lawyer, Elizabeth Grossman. Eli argued that Grossman was not really working for his mother. He then provided the prosecutor with a rambling explanation that made little sense to those in the courtroom. “It had to do with a conspiracy, a civil conspiracy, as well as the conspiracy to have my mother convicted.”
Sequeira froze in front of the witness box. “Are you telling this jury that Liz Grossman… is part of a large conspiracy to get your mother convicted and to steal from the estate?”
Eli looked directly at Sequeira. “I never said large. It takes two people to conspire.”
“You’re right,” the prosecutor said in a raised voice. “It takes two!” Pacing before the jury, Sequeira directed Eli to identify the members of the alleged conspiracy for the court.
Dumbfounded, Eli looked to his mother, who was at the podium demanding the questioning of her son be halted immediately.
Judge Brady cut Susan off mid-sentence and directed Eli to answer the question.
Repositioning himself in the chair, Eli listed the alleged participants. There was his Uncle John Polk, John’s lawyer, Bud MacKenzie, the Briners, and his dad’s friend, Barry Morris. “They’ve used their connections in this court and others to control things the best that they can.”
“Am I, me, Paul Sequeira, just some guy who works for the D.A.’s office, am I working for this big conspiracy?”
“I have not seen documentation, proof… no one has said anything to lead me to believe that,” Eli said. He also declined to speculate as to whether members of law enforcement were also involved, or that they had “staged” the crime scene, as his mother alleged.
All eyes in the courtroom turned to Susan, who was now chuckling. Addressing the prosecutor, she insisted that she never accused him of being a party to the conspiracy. “But, I’ve had my doubts,” Susan giggled. “You, too, your honor.”
“Ms. Polk, I do not find anything amusing about this,” Judge Brady reprimanded. “And I don’t think the giggling is appropriate. Stop it!”
