Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [134]
“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