Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [124]
“No, not really.”
“No?” Susan was incredulous. “Are you aware that most Americans do?”
“No, I was not aware of that.”
“Did anybody tell you that I am supposed to be a medium?” she persisted.
Costa had not heard that, nor had his investigators looked into accusations that Felix intended to overthrow the U.S. government, as Susan claimed in her diary. This elicited jeers from the gallery. Still, Susan continued firing questions at the detective about her husband’s supposed anti-American activities. Claiming that two private investigators had looked into Felix’s dealings, she said that the pair had stumbled upon writings that detailed his plan to bring down the U.S. government and take over the country.
Susan grew surly when the detective suggested that Felix had several restraining orders against her at the time of his death. “To your recollection, how many restraining orders do you think my husband had…?”
“Maybe two,” Costa replied with an air of confidence.
“Oh really? Two? How about zero?” Susan snipped.
“At least one I can think of,” the detective assured the court.
Susan retorted in a mocking tone to chortles from the gallery. “Oh you do, do you?” She got him to admit that he was incorrect in his belief that Felix had gotten some type of order of protection as a result of his 911 calls to police.
Her offensive continued when the detective said that, during the course of his investigation, he never learned that Felix was violent. Susan pointed to two letters she wrote detailing Felix’s alleged abuse; one that was found on her computer hard drive and another that police confiscated from a safe hidden beneath the wet bar in the master bedroom.
“How’d you guys get my safe open?”
“Again, I don’t know anything about a safe and I don’t know who might have opened it,” Costa said, claiming that he did not know about the safe.
Susan handed the detective a copy of the letter that she claimed was locked inside the safe. “You don’t recall that the letter contains a history of my husband’s threats, violence…”
“Objection!” Sequeira interrupted.
“Ms. Polk, this is inappropriate,” Judge Brady said, sustaining the prosecutor’s objection.
“Did you investigate whether my husband did the things in that letter? For example, did you investigate whether he raped me when I was a patient in his care?”
“Objection!” the prosecutor jumped up again.
Talking over Sequeira, Susan quoted the evidence code.
“Do not argue with me,” Judge Brady snapped.
Brady’s admonishment did little to deter Susan. Handing the detective a crime scene photo depicting the safe lying open on her bed, she asked, “It’s not likely I’d keep my safe on the bed.”
“No,” the detective agreed.
Once Susan jarred his memory with the photo and had him read the letter while on the stand, he vaguely recalled entering it in his police report.
“So how can you say nothing ever came to your attention about spousal abuse,” Susan demanded. She was visibly annoyed with Costa and his claims.
“No other sources indicated your husband was violent,” the detective retorted. He admitted that he had not read Susan’s complete diary. To do so would have violated the terms of the search warrant that detectives used to seize evidence from the house. Susan was incredulous, charging that detectives read the diary before the warrant was even signed.
In spite of this setback, Susan pressed on. At one point during the cross-examination, she trotted out police photos of the overturned ottoman that detectives claimed was kicked out from under Felix after he was struck on the head during the attack. Susan argued that the position of the ottoman, upside down and on the opposite end of the living room from its cover, proved her claim that Felix had used it as a weapon and thrown it at her early in the fight. Marching to an easel set up in the courtroom, she sketched a diagram of how police claimed to have found the furnishings. To Susan, it was apparent that officers had “staged” the crime scene.
“Why is the ottoman cover across the room from the ottoman at the