MARTINEZ, Calif. — There's nothing funny about a murder charge.

"I can't believe this is funny to people," Susan Polk's son Eli said Thursday after being recalled to the witness stand in his mother's first-degree murder trial. "There is not one funny thing about this. It's ... it's turned into some spectacle."

But murder was hardly the issue.

Polk, 48, completed a third week of her defense case Thursday with barely a word of testimony about her claim that she acted in self-defense in October 2002, when she stabbed her 70-year-old husband, Felix Polk, with a paring knife.

What overshadowed the proceedings this week, and what led to the rare moments of levity, was Polk's stunningly belligerent behavior toward the judge, the court staff, the prosecutor and a schoolteacher named Marjorie Briner.

Story continues

Briner, the foster mother to Polk's estranged son Gabriel, had the misfortune of remarking on the witness stand Tuesday that Polk had been verbally abusive to her in phone calls and letters. She was still defending that remark Thursday.

Polk, who is acting as her own attorney, spent hours poring over copies of her letters to the Briner family, handwritten in tight lines of jail-issued pencil, page after page of impressions, instructions and friendly chit-chat. She challenged Briner to find any "verbal abuse."

"We haven't even come close to the area of inquiry I've allowed," Judge Laurel Brady repeatedly warned. "Move on, this is not relevant."

"I object," Polk said sharply. "Perjury is always relevant."

Polk told Briner to take the two thick stacks of letters in front of her that also included correspondence to and from Polk's three sons, place them into separate piles, and then direct the jurors to any evidence of name-calling on Polk's part.

Briner appeared stunned.

A juror in the front row leaned his elbows against his knees, stared at his feet and furiously chewed gum. Another juror closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Briner and her husband, Dan, never knew Susan Polk until Gabriel became a part of their family. Briner said initially they tried to mend Gabriel's relationship with his mother, whom he refused to speak to after her arrest.

The mother-son relationship soured, in part, because Polk believes Briner is involved in a conspiracy to brainwash her children against her in order to loot the family's estate.

Outside court, Briner said she had dealt with Polk's mental illness for several years, and suspected Felix may have stayed with her to protect their three sons. Polk denies she is mentally ill. She claims that her husband was schizophrenic.

But the only salient testimony jurors heard this week about Felix Polk was from two witnesses who spent less than 15 minutes on the stand. They supported the defendant's claim that Felix was emotionally controlling, at least at the beginning of the couple's 30-year relationship.

Psychotherapist Karen Saeger testified Wednesday that she found Felix's behavior to be "disturbing and improper."

"There were two Felixes," Saeger said. "One was tightly coiled like he could spring at you; the other was charming and charismatic."

Saeger said she was acquainted with Felix from 1979-1986 when they both taught psychology at the California Graduate School of Professional Psychology. He had a "widespread reputation" for entering into a dual relationship with his wife, Saeger said.

Witness Kathy Lucia had not seen Susan Polk since they were both patients in Felix Polk's group therapy sessions nearly 30 years ago.

"He was trying to control you I felt," Lucia said to Polk. "You were dependent on him in a lot of ways."

But their poignant insights were buried under the defendant's tedious questioning and countless recriminations that seemed to wither the judge's will by week's end.

"You ought to be working in a third-world dictatorship, instead of the U.S., with your tactics," Polk told Assistant District Attorney Paul Sequeira, whom she also called "a moral creep."

"Actually, it might be preferable to being here," Sequeira said.

Eli, who is in custody awaiting trial on a domestic violence charge that he denies, was surly and argumentative. He was on the stand for 18 hours and 45 minutes of direct and redirect testimony last week, the judge said. Polk recalled him Thursday to impeach Briner's character.

"Is she a liar?" Eli said. "That's just an understatement of her character. She's disgusting, what she's done."

Eli testified about the alleged scheme to loot the estate, despite Brady's admonishments.

He accused Briner, Sequeira and the courts of lying and manipulating evidence. Polk was emboldened by the presence of her son, her lone defender, and Brady's voice seemed to trail off in mid-sentence as Polk continually spoke over her.

"This is inappropriate," Sequeira said.

"Who's the judge here?" Polk interjected, throwing her pen on the table.

"I've just made a ruling which everyone has just ignored," Brady said when things seemed to be at their worst.

Eli said he was having trouble concentrating when people were laughing.

Nobody was laughing about the murder charge. But then, it hardly came up.