Final Analysis (29 page)

Finding it pointless to continue objecting, the prosecutor stood silent as Gabe again explained that he carried the brass knuckles because he was scared of his mother and brother Eli. He said that Eli told him he would do “whatever” it took to prevent him from testifying against their mother. Gabe took his brother’s remark as a threat and obtained a restraining order against Eli. According to Gabe, Eli held “a lot of resentment” toward both his parents and acted out a lot, both at home and in school.

Susan then turned to the family’s time in Piedmont and Gabriel’s difficulties while in middle school, where he admitted to being involved in fights and being suspended for “drugs.” Responding to Susan’s insinuations, Gabe blamed the constant arguing at home for his behavior, for his acting up in school, and for the hard time he had making friends during childhood.

“Parents in the neighborhood were scared of you,” he said. “Scared of our family, generally.” Gabe went on to name one parent who refused to let her child play with him and his brothers because of concerns about Susan’s mental state—or as Gabe put it “you and your delusions.”

His sharp remarks did not appear to faze Susan, who plowed ahead, at one point displaying photographs of family trips to Disneyland and Gabe as a child playing with a friend and the family dogs, Max and Mitsie, in an attempt to elicit fond memories of their times together.

“Didn’t you say ‘even if she is delusional, we love her because she’s fun?’” Susan asked, holding up the “Best Mom” plaque that her three sons awarded her in 1997.

“Yeah, we loved you. This [the plaque] was Dad’s idea by the way,” he shot back. Susan wept when Gabe said he couldn’t confirm her claims that his dad punched her in the face, dragged her up the stairs by her hair, and told her that he would never give her a divorce.

“He threw water in your face one time,” the teen acknowledged.

“One time?” Susan fired back.

Gabe admitted that his father may have picked up and thrown small items around the house during arguments with Susan but said that he never threw anything directly at her.

Continuing, Susan asked Gabe about his strained relationship with Eli, tearing up as the questions came out of her mouth.

“Do you recall telling your brother Eli that he was your best friend?”

“Yes,” Gabe replied in a monotone.

“Do you remember when you went to school wearing his oversized clothes and shoes?” Susan asked, referring to Gabe’s time in elementary school. “Do you miss your brother?”

There was silence in the courtroom as Gabriel contemplated his answer. “Yes, I do miss him,” the teen replied, straightening himself in the chair. “I still have affection for Eli, Dad, and you…. I do have good memories. I do love you. But there’s terrible memories with the good memories.”

“You still have affection for your brother?” Susan posed. “Then why did you sue him?”

“I didn’t sue Eli, I sued you.”

“Didn’t you and your brother settle a wrongful death suit with me for $300,000?” Susan said, referring to the civil action that Gabe and Adam filed after her arrest.

Gabe was visibly upset when his mother brought up the suit in court, insisting that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it because of a confidentiality agreement that both parties had signed. “You know that,” he snapped at his mother.

“Couldn’t you have just left him off?” Susan asked, referring to Eli.

Gabe told his mother that he was not a lawyer, but it was his understanding that he and Adam had sued her, and that since Eli took her side, he had to be named in the suit.

“These things are obviously very important to you but they don’t seem to add or subtract from your case,” Judge Brady told Susan.

“I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you,” Susan told Gabriel before court adjourned that night. “You are aware that I loved all three of my sons the same?”

“Yes, I know,” he acknowledged. “You appreciate Eli a lot more now because he buys into your delusions and we don’t.”

On Tuesday, jurors arrived for a third day of cross-examination. Instead, they learned that Susan had asked for another delay.

“I’m sick and I think I’m getting bronchitis,” she sniffled.

The judge arranged to have her seen by a doctor; Brady also let Susan know that she was anxious to keep the proceedings moving along and hoped to resume court after lunch.

When Susan returned that afternoon, she reported that she had been prescribed antibiotics for her condition. She then requested an adjournment until the following Monday to get some “much needed rest.” “I was up half the night coughing,” she told the judge. “This is a murder trial and I want to be at my best.”

Judge Brady was sympathetic to Susan’s infirmity—she, too, was nursing a sore throat, but denied her request for what she deemed an “unreasonable” delay and ordered all parties back to court on Thursday, March 16. This adjournment was further evidence of the judge’s extraordinary patience. Brady rarely lost her cool even as Susan accused her of conspiring with the prosecutor or showing bias against the defense in front of jurors.

At times, Brady’s interchanges with Susan were akin to a kindergarten teacher scolding a young student, soothing the child until she calmed down. When it became clear that Susan could not be reigned in, Brady would order a “time out,” punishing Susan with fifteen minutes in a holding cell to regain her composure. Remarkably, Susan continued to push even as the judge reprimanded her. “Well, then I’m taking papers with me to read!” she told Brady after being ordered to the holding cell one afternoon.

“No,” the judge shot back. There was no reading during a time out.

It seemed that Susan had mastered the art of knowing just how far to push before landing in serious trouble, and she continued to press throughout the trial. Sometimes the judge’s latitude went too far as Brady allowed Susan to disrupt the flow of testimony and antagonize the prosecution. The end result was a highly irregular relationship between the bench and the attorneys, but in this case of many bizarre relationships, no one seemed particularly surprised.

On Thursday, jurors learned of yet another delay. An alternate juror had called in sick and, of course, there were more objections from the de
fendant. This time, Susan was upset that the leg shackles she was being forced to wear were causing runs in her pantyhose. Next, Susan objected to the prosecutor’s request to interrupt her cross-examination of Gabe so that he could put Adam on the stand. Adam had been waiting in the wings to testify for the prosecution since the trial had begun and was on the State’s list to take the stand after Gabe. But Adam was growing increasingly concerned that all the delays would prevent him from returning to UCLA in time for final exams and a scheduled trip to South Africa with his girlfriend.

Susan argued that it was unfair to disrupt her case merely to accommodate her son’s vacation plans. Besides, she felt that Gabriel’s testimony was too important to interrupt.

“You would think that the defendant might have some consideration for her child,” the prosecutor said.

“I object,” Susan shot back. “That’s an outrageous comment.”

“We will start fresh on Monday and hopefully move along,” the judge ruled, choosing to postpone the trial another day rather than replace the sick juror with an alternate. Already, one juror had been excused from the case and with the trial expected to last another two months, she did not want to risk losing another. This postponement would be the fourth delay since the trial began one week earlier.

Susan took two final shots at the prosecutor before the court adjourned Thursday. Out of earshot of jurors, she accused the D.A.’s office of “coaching” her two sons to slander both her and Eli on the stand. She also accused Sequeira of prosecutorial misconduct, charging that he deliberately tried to provoke a mistrial with his supposed underhanded strategies.

“I’d rather have needles shoved in my eye than have a mistrial,” Sequeira shot back.

“I would be very careful about making such accusations without any proof,” Judge Brady admonished Susan.

C
ourt reconvened on Monday, March 20, with Susan continuing to question Gabriel about his childhood. “I don’t remember, I was five,” the teen responded to one question. “I was just a little kid,” he replied to another.

“I think we’re having a forest-for-the-trees problem,” Judge Brady told Susan at one point during her examination. “A lot of time is being spent on minutiae about events that are extremely important to you—again, I’m not telling you how to try your case, but my concern is that [the jury’s] attention will be lost for the important 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.

T
he 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
pro per
status if she continued to ignore the court’s rules.

“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.

D
uring 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.