MARTINEZ, Calif. — Murder defendant Susan Polk showed jurors graphic photos of her husband's dead body in court Wednesday as she accused a police witness of doctoring the crime scene.

"I'm sorry to show such gruesome photos, but it's become kind of necessary," Polk said, pointing to small details in glossy pictures of Felix Polk's pale, partially naked body covered with blood on the floor of the couple's poolside cottage.

"Wouldn't it seem unusual to you that blood would still be wet 24 hours later?" Polk asked retired police Sgt. Kenneth Hansen.

"Yes," Hansen said.

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Polk, 48, is representing herself against charges that she stabbed her 70-year-old psychologist husband to death with a paring knife on Oct. 13, 2002.

Hansen was the first officer to respond to the scene the next night when the couple's youngest son, Gabriel, found his father's body, called 911 and named his mother as the killer.

Polk tapped her pointer — a wooden ruler — on a photo of her husband's bloody scalp and noted that the back of his head still appeared to be wet.

"And how about the little puddle of water next to the blood?" Polk asked.

No puddle appeared visible on the dimly lit photo, and Hansen said he could not see what she was referring to.

Polk suggested that someone had poured water on her dead husband's head, making dried blood appear wet, and tainting the scene.

The judge admonished her for making unsubstantiated accusations.

Susan Polk admits she stabbed her husband but claims it was an act of self-defense, a life-or-death struggle for the knife. She says she endured years of physical and mental abuse from Dr. Felix Polk, a man who was her therapist as a teenager, her lover soon after, and her husband by age 25.

Polk has accused district attorneys and police of engaging in a malicious prosecution, but she has not been able to offer any evidence to satisfy the court that it should be allowed as part of her defense strategy.

Polk's son Gabriel, now 19, previously testified that his mother suffered from paranoid delusions and willfully killed his father.

Another police witness testified Wednesday morning that Felix Polk called the station a few days before he was killed.

"He mentioned that he feared for his life," police chief Dan Lawrence said. "He mentioned that she had told him she was going to come home and blow his head off."

Misquoted?

Polk claims she was traumatic the night police found her husband's body and arrested her on suspicion of his murder. But, Hansen testified she was unemotional.

"I advised Ms. Polk that her husband appeared to have died from unnatural causes," Hansen said. "Her response was, 'Oh well, we were getting a divorce anyway.'"

"Is it possible I could have said something like, 'We were getting a divorce'?" Polk asked on cross-examination.

"No," Hansen said, adding that he wrote her response verbatim in his police report 10 days later.

Polk accused him of trying to goad her that night, to "elicit a response" without first having to read her her Miranda Rights against self-incrimination.

"Do you recall repeatedly leaning over me and saying, 'Ms. Polk, your husband's dead. What do you have to say to that?'" Polk asked.

"I never said that," Hansen told jurors.

"Did you think that was just something good to come up with, to add that word 'anyway' to my statement, to make it look like I didn't care about my husband?" Polk snapped at the witness.

"No, ma'am," Hansen said.

"Is that what you did, a little editing?" Polk interrupted.

"No, ma'am," Hansen said, in between fits of coughing. The witness apologized and said he was ill.

Several jurors have started openly showing their feelings for the defendant. Eye-rolling, quick glances to one another, and barely concealed smirks increased during Polk's many confrontations with the witness and the prosecutor.

'There's only so much I can take'

Clearly, Polk still is angry over being forced by the court to complete her cross-examination of her son Gabriel. She made good on her promise Tuesday to vociferously object at every opportunity to the prosecutor's examination of future witnesses.

For instance, as the prosecutor questioned police chief Lawrence Wednesday morning, Polk lodged a string of random objections — "Speculation!" "Hearsay!" "Compound question!" "Testifying from the podium!" "Cumulative!" — all of which were overruled.

For the most part, Assistant District Attorney Paul Sequeira bit his lip and carried on.

But when Polk again accused him of prosecutorial misconduct, in front of the jury, and charged him with using "delaying tactics," Sequeira lost his cool.

He slammed his right palm on the table three times in unison with Polk's objections. The jurors froze. The judge ordered them both to stop and sent the panel out for their lunch recess.

"I'm sorry," Sequeira said, pacing. "But I have been doing this over two decades and I have never been in a courtroom where someone refused to follow the rules."

Sequeira called Polk a "passive-aggressive" defendant who "flouts the court's authority at every opportunity."

"I'm asking this court to revoke her pro per status," Sequeira pleaded with the judge. "There's only so much I can take."

The judge gave Polk a dressing down, but stopped short of revoking her pro per status, her ability to act as her own attorney.

"I can tell you from my observations that this — I don't know what to call it — this pattern of behavior we seem to be going through is alienating this jury," Superior Court Judge Laurel Brady told Polk during the sidebar.

Brady ordered Polk to refrain from flinging "baseless" accusations of prosecutorial misconduct before the jury, and from arguing with the court over every ruling.

"If you were an attorney, I would have imposed substantial sanctions by now," Brady said.

Polk fired four attorneys and endured one mistrial before Judge Brady granted her request earlier this year to represent herself. If she were to lose her pro per status, another mistrial would be inevitable as the court would have to allow a new attorney several months to get up to speed.

Polk has vowed to continue to represent herself in what she believes is a fight for her life.

"It is the obligation of defense counsel to name it when they see it," Polk said, reading from a California evidence code manual, as she explained why she felt it necessary to continue to "name" judicial and prosecutorial misconduct for the record, when she saw fit.

"I find it very hard to accuse you, your honor, of judicial misconduct. I find it hard to accuse Mr. Sequeira of prosecutorial misconduct," Polk said in a calm, even tone. "I don't like to do it. I've been a shy person most of my life."

Polk's motions to have Sequeira replaced as a prosecutor were denied.