Murder defendant Susan Polk has severed relations with another ally in her trial.
Polk fired her case manager, Valerie Harris, during a short recess Thursday morning.
According to a source close to the case, Polk told Harris, "This isn't working out," asked her to leave the courtroom, and indicated she wanted to handle her defense alone after learning Harris was unable to procure an expert witness who would be willing to testify on her behalf for free.
Polk has threatened to fire Harris in the past, only to change her mind and ask her to stay. This time Harris gathered her computer, her files and her briefcase from the defense table, and left.
"No comment, no comment," Harris said to reporters as she walked toward the elevators, brushing tears from her cheeks. "Leave me alone."
Polk is in custody and has depended on Harris, a computer consultant with no legal training, to assist her in all aspects of her defense and her personal life — from scheduling witnesses and securing important documents to selecting Polk's clothing and making arrangements for the care of her Labrador retriever, Dusty.
Polk, 48, is representing herself against charges that she stabbed to death her 70-year-old psychologist husband, Dr. Felix Polk, in October 2002.
She initially denied killing him, but later claimed that she stabbed him in self-defense and that Felix Polk was physically and emotionally abusive during their 30-year relationship.
Polk has no legal training and fired four defense attorneys before the judge granted her request to act as her own counsel. Her last attorney was Daniel Horowitz, a well-known legal analyst whose wife was murdered during Polk's first trial, causing the judge to declare a mistrial.
Horowitz told jurors in opening statements at her first trial that Felix Polk spent a year in a psychiatric hospital while in the Navy during the 1950s, and that a defense expert would testify that mental disease made him prone to outbursts and rage.
Polk's decision to fire Harris, according to the source, occurred shortly after learning that Harris found a government expert witness who would testify about her husband's naval medical records, but she could not convince him to waive his $400 per hour rate.
"Miss Harris doesn't work for me anymore," Polk told the judge at the end of court Thursday, "so she has no standing in this case."
Harris told reporters that she still stood by Susan Polk and believed she was a woman "fighting for her life in court."
Harris previously worked as an assistant to Daniel Horowitz and his co-counsel Ivan Golde. Harris met Horowitz at the Scott Peterson trial, where he was a frequent legal commentator for news media and she was a regular trial watcher.
When Polk fired Horowitz, she asked Harris to stay on as her case manager.
Harris told reporters she would return to the case if asked back.
'Dog lover' in dispute
Polk spent a third day cross-examining the lead detective in her husband's murder case, retired Sheriff's Department Det. Michael Costa. For a third day, she accused the detective of tampering with evidence, sullying the crime scene, and failing to investigate her claims that her husband was physically abusive.
A laptop Costa seized from her home, which contained Polk's private diaries, was shown to the jury.
"Isn't it so that you never found any evidence whatsoever that I planned to kill my husband?" Polk asked.
"That's true," Costa said.
She also referred to a declaration she kept in a safe in her bedroom, allegedly written more than a year before the incident, in which she claims her husband continually beat her and threatened to kill her if she ever left him.
Polk asked Costa why he never investigated her allegations of abuse as outlined in the document.
"I wasn't aware of any self-defense issues until two years later," Costa said.
In the course of his investigation, Costa testified, no one other than the defendant came forward to say that Felix Polk was abusive.
In fact, the couple's youngest son, Gabriel, found his father's body bleeding from stab wounds on the floor of a guest cottage in the couple's property Oct. 14, 2002 and called 911 to turn in his mother.
Polk's middle son, Eli, 20, has stuck by his mother's side and was helping Harris in her defense until he was arrested earlier this month on a domestic violence charge.
Gabriel Polk, now 19, previously testified that Eli was under his mother's emotional control, and that his mother suffered from delusions and had talked about killing his dad for years.
According to prosecutors, Polk didn't admit to stabbing her husband until forensic investigators were able to link her to his death, with hair fibers and prints.
Polk says she was isolated by Felix Polk and untrusting of police. She also accuses detectives of trying to make her husband appear innocent of abuse of all sorts, including pet abuse.
"Were you trying to make my husband sound like someone who liked dogs?" Polk asked, referring to grand jury testimony in which Costa told jurors that there was a dog bed in Felix Polk's car.
"No," Costa said.
Polk believes her husband poisoned one of her dogs, Tuffy. The "dog bed," she says, was actually a blanket he had in the back seat for a one-time trip with one of their dogs.
"Isn't it so the grand jury had heard I was afraid my husband was poisoning my dog?" Polk asked Costa. "Were you trying to make my husband sound like the kind of guy who was a dog lover?"
Costa denied that.
"No? You just turned a blanket into a doggie bed?" Polk continued.
"It was my feeling that was what it was used for," Costa said.
The dog issue was brought up on redirect examination, presumably to quell any angst among dog lovers in the jury box.
"Why didn't you try to dig up a dog somewhere and determine whether he'd been poisoned," the prosecutor asked.
"It was my understanding," Costa said, "that it was some time ago, and it hadn't even been proven if a dog had died."
At the end of the day, Polk announced she would need to recall Costa when she began her case.
The detective shook his head as if in disbelief, but did not comment.
