Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [128]
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.
Less than fifteen minutes later, Brady ended the cross-examination. She was angered by Susan’s flagrant disregard for her instructions to avoid questions about Adam’s alleged prior bad acts and Gabe’s relationship with the Briners.
“Okay, we’re done for the day,” Brady ordered,