MARTINEZ, Calif. — After nearly four months of testimony, jurors hearing the murder trial of Susan Polk began their deliberations Tuesday morning.

They must decide whether Polk, 48, acted in self-defense when she stabbed her 70-year-old therapist husband to death in the cottage of their $1.85 million home or whether the housewife murdered him in cold blood.

"Please use your common sense and do not be swayed by the misrepresentations of the district attorney," Polk, who is acting as her own lawyer, told jurors during a tearful closing argument Tuesday morning.

Polk objected to not being given more than three hours to speak. The judge allowed her an extra 10 minutes, with notice at the five- and one-minute marks.

Polk, who was allowed to represent herself after firing five attorneys, claims she stabbed her husband, Felix Polk, in self-defense after he attacked her first with a paring knife. She says she lived under Felix's tyrannical control for their entire 30-year relationship.

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Prosecutors say Polk deliberately killed her husband, with whom she was entangled in a messy divorce, after she learned she was losing their house, a significant portion or her spousal support, and custody of their youngest son, Gabriel.

The defendant faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. Jurors were also given the option of the lesser included charges of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

Polk told jurors Tuesday that she would never have considered attacking her husband: He was at least 60 pounds heavier than she, and she needed his income to survive.

"I'm too small," the diminutive housewife said as she raised her arms, palms up, to show jurors her bone-thin arms. "Look at the size of my arms. Compare them to your husband's. If you're a man, compare them to your own."

District Attorney Paul Sequeira told jurors, "There's one set [of rules] for Susan Polk and one set for the rest of us."

Autopsy reports indicate Felix suffered 27 stab and incise wounds, and blunt force head trauma. Polk had marks around her eyes, bite marks to one or both hands and a red welt on her shoulder.

After she was arrested on suspicion of murder, Polk denied any knowledge of her husband's death. But as the case against her progressed and DNA evidence put her at the scene of the crime, Polk began to give media interviews from her jail cell, and she admitted that she stabbed Felix that night, claiming it was self-defense.

She also began to divulge for the first time publicly that she was drugged and raped by Felix when she was a teenage patient in his care. During testimony in court, she told jurors that Felix hypnotized her into trances, during which she would feed him psychic predictions about world events. She said he used her premonitions to further his secret role as an Israeli intelligence agent.

Polk's behavior in court — her continual interruptions of others' testimony, her recriminations at the judge, DA and court personnel, and her inability to follow court rulings — may be some of the most damaging evidence against her credibility.

"There's two sets of rules," the prosecutor told jurors in his rebuttal closing argument Tuesday morning. "There's one set for Susan Polk and one set for the rest of us. She lives by her own rules and always has."

Although Polk initially said in press interviews that she and Felix had sex by the time she was 16, during her own testimony, she said she looked back at the evidence and realized it was actually 14.

"The problem is, it's just like everything else in this case," Assistant District Attorney Paul Sequeira told jurors.

"Sixteen wasn't good enough. Then 15 wasn't good enough. Now it's 14," Sequeira said. "And now she's being raped. Drugged and raped."