This piece was first posted on “The Policy Think Site”
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© 2006 by Jay B. Gaskill
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A Loosely Wrapped
Widow Defends Herself Badly, Cont.
THE CASE OF
THE PEOPLE OF
Sentencing is postponed. Next Date:
This commentary presupposes
some additional knowledge of the Susan Polk murder case. [It has captured the
attention of courtroom dram fans and local media for several months.]
I began following it in this
space because of its strange nexus to the Dyleski
murder (the knifing homicide of Pam Vitale, the wife of Mrs. Polk’s trial
former attorney, Dan Horowitz – my case tracking blog
is referenced below). I was also intrigued because the Polk case represents the
poster child for the abuses allowed by Faretta vs. California,
the Supreme Court case that makes self-representation such a nightmare for the
trial judge. [See the Recorder legal
newspaper piece reproduced at the end.]
If we remember this case at all
in the next few years, it will be due to something else entirely: The case of
the People of California vs. Susan Polk
is a parable; it is the story of how a spectacularly failed therapeutic
relationship collided with a spectacularly flawed legal doctrine to make
spectacularly bad courtroom theater.
JUST A
FOOTNOTE?
Friday, July 10
Charlie Hoehn to the Rescue? Don’t Count on it.
Every felony defendant in
What
is going on here? Mrs. Polk is grasping
at straws and Mr. Hoehn is willing to assist in the
enterprise provided he is paid for his efforts.
If
Hoehn remains in the case, it will be an uphill
struggle.
Recall
that Mrs. Polk is barred from claiming ineffective assistance of counsel. So
the counsel issue turns on whether the trial court erred in granting Mrs.
Polk’s request for self representation. If, for example, it were to develop
that the defendant was so barking mad as to amount to mental incompetence, then
her assertion of the right to self representation might not be upheld.
Alas,
Susan Polk was too clever by half. The issue will go nowhere.
Usually
a motion for a new trial is pro forma,
an “opportunity” – rarely taken by the astute trial judge – to correct his or
her “errors” before the appeal process begins.
As
a practical matter, the important function of the motion is to present new evidence, matters not otherwise in
the trial record, like witnesses not discovered in time, instances of
behind-the-scenes jury misdoings, and – in this case – professional, expert
evidence bearing of the defendant’s mental condition during and before trial.
The
case is now over till August 11th for “further proceedings”.
There
is at least a 50% chance that Mr. Hoehn will not
continue as Polk’s counsel then. If he
does, there is a 99.99% chance that: (a) Mrs. Polk will not get a new trial.
(b)
She will be sentenced to the term proscribed by law for murder second.
JBG
MY EARLIER POSTINGS IN REVERSE CHRON. ORDER
Friday,
4:00 PM Pacific
GUILTY – MURDER 2ND
As I wrote here a few days ago: Anyone who attempts self representation in a murder trial has a fool for a client. There are no exceptions worthy of mention.
In that strange moral and metaphysical universe inhabited by Susan Polk, a huge injustice was done to her today, compounding the injustices that drove her to stab husband Felix to death.
From the perspective of the real world, justice was done. A slightly unhinged woman has been held accountable for killing her husband; her imagined and real problems with her husband did not justify his murder. Her unconventional trial antics worked no magic on the jury.
In finding Susan Polk guilty of second degree murder, the jury has rejected Polk’s self defense claim, but found sufficient reason – possibly in light of her accumulated marital and pre-marital grievances, possibly out of deference to her to her bizarre mental state – to reject the first degree premeditated murder theory argued by the prosecution.
Evidence of premeditation can be overcome, for example, by a “sudden quarrel”. The offense can also be mitigated by elements of subjective self defense that fall so far short of the legal test that even manslaughter can’t be justified. The latter could have been in play here if some jurors thought that Mrs. Polk acted on impulse or was moved by a mixture of revenge and a paranoid “need” for preemptive action, or all of the above. I doubt that we’ll ever know for sure. Twelve jurors are rarely able to come up with a single, coherent explanation of how they reached any given murder verdict.
This outcome is what professionals call “substantial justice.” For someone of Mrs. Polk’s age, the practical differences between second and first degree murder sentences (15 to life vs. 25 to life respectively) can be very small because an actual second degree murder sentence often overlaps the minimum for first degree; given this prospect and the difficulties of life in a California prison (as Indiana Jones said, “It’s not the years, it’s the miles”) the additional decade she could have served in the first degree scenario would affect only the level of care needed when Mrs. Polk is eventually paroled into a geriatric facility.
An aside: The mindset of Mrs. Polk was criminal, but not evil in the classic “Edmund Burke” sense.
[My philosophical take on that epi-topic is at http://jaygaskill.com/evil2l.htm and http://jaygaskill.com/explainingevil.htm .]
For a contrast with Mrs. Polk’s offense, look at the case against the young man who will be tried in July for stabbing Dan Horowitz’s wife, Pam, to death. http://www.jaygaskill.com/Vitalehorowitzdeath.htm .
The Susan Polk sentencing will take place in about a month. Don’t expect any surprises. There is no probation for second degree murder, no lesser term.
Just before the verdict
The outcome of this case (probably a murder conviction) will be announced in about one hour. At that moment, I’ll be attending the birthday of a very important 2 year old girl. [We all have our priorities.]
I’ll comment on Mrs. Polk’s fate at
Stay tuned…
JBG
Argument winds down. The case is in the hands of the jury.
Mrs. Polk made a decent enough final argument on her own behalf yesterday, given the complete hash she made of the defense case before then.
After a short DA rebuttal, jurors were given their final instructions, a reading during which Mrs. Polk studied her notes and wept.
One of the perils of self representation is that, post-conviction, your appeal is almost always pre-eviscerated because: (a) you haven’t protected the record on appeal by making proper objections all along and; (b) you are not able to complain about ineffective representation of counsel.
While Mrs. Polk reportedly made some objections to the prosecutor’s argument, she had earlier failed to narrow the prosecution’s case by allowing character evidence to come in. This is always problematic for a defendant with aggressive tendencies.
At the end of the day, the thing that will sink this defendant is the location of the knife wounds she admittedly inflicted on poor Felix. When authentically acting in self defense, you do not normally stab the alleged assailant in the back. I note that Mrs. Polk thoroughly cleaned the blood from the assault knife and carefully put it back in the kitchen where it belonged after had she stabbed her husband. And I note that she did not the immediately call the police reporting his “assault” and her heroic “struggle.”
If this jury concludes (as I expect them to conclude) that Susan Polk and not Felix picked out the kitchen knife in the first place then – not to put too fine a point on it – she is toast.
A generous jury verdict would be second degree murder; a more likely outcome is first degree. An outside chance exists of a manslaughter verdict, but only if the jurors (more than one of whom apparently dozed during part of her argument and laughed during some of her evidence) really like her.
So the smart money is on a murder conviction. An acquittal is too improbable to seriously contemplate.
Both sides rest. Argument Monday.
Stay tuned.
A Loosely Wrapped Widow
Defends Herself Badly
I have declined to comment on the Polk case, until now (except in an interview with the Recorder legal newspaper—full text below). But the latest developments are far too tempting.
Some background:
Susan Polk, who is on trial for murder in a courtroom in Martinez, CA, has admittedly stabbed her much older husband, Felix Polk, a psychologist who (it appears from the evidence) began their relationship when he was her therapist and Ms. Polk was of tender years. Her late husband thereafter attempted to run her life. This was a natural result of their age difference and his “therapeutic” relationship with her. It was a marital train wreck in the making.
The late night stabbing took place when the couple was locked in tense and acrimonious divorce proceedings and defendant Polk was temporarily resident on the couple’s disputed property.
Susan Polk claims self defense. This is a difficult claim because the elder husband whom she stabbed (Felix was 70 to Susan’s 48) was unarmed. All this has played out before a jury who has witnessed Ms. Polk’s bizarre attempts at clever self-representation. She earlier dismissed Dan Horowitz, an excellent trial lawyer, from her case. Anyone who attempts self representation in a murder trial has a fool for a client. There are no exceptions worthy of mention.
The Polk case illustrates another or my favorite maxims: Intelligence is no substitute for judgment. Ms. Polk’s mind is of the intelligent but loosely wrapped variety. She seems fixated on conspiracy theories and the legally untenable notion that the 20 stab wounds she inflicted on her husband might not be the legal cause of his death because - according to one witness - he probably died of a heart attack during the stabbing. One supposes that all those deep cuts from a kitchen knife might have had something to do with it.
Yesterday’s testimony shed little additional light: A former homicide investigator testified that the victim hadn’t “bled out”, evidence that his heart stopped beating before the stab wounds had an opportunity to kill him directly. The judge will have the last word here, when she instructs the jury at the conclusion of this overlong trial. Not to put too fine point on it, when you assault someone with a deadly instrument and there is an ensuing fatal event that is the natural and probable result of the attack, you can be guilty of murder. Think of those movie scenes where someone is shot in the leg and falls over a cliff. No the bullet wasn’t the medical cause of death, but it was the legal cause for purposes of fixing criminal responsibility.
Ms. Polk has one slim thread of a partial defense. More accurately, she had that thread going for her before she discharged Dan Horowitz. We legal specialists tend to call it “imperfect self defense”. Theoretically, when someone acts in a sincere, honest belief that using deadly force on someone is necessary in self defense, the homicide may be mitigated to manslaughter rather than murder. This may be true even if the jury concludes that the belief in the need for self defense was unreasonable. Reasonable, honest self defense results in an acquittal; unreasonable, but honest self defense may result in manslaughter. Think of those cases where someone has recently been assaulted, sees a dark silhouette in the alley, gets a glimpse of a gun-like object and shoots. Here, of course, I suspect that the jury will conclude that the alley itself was in Ms. Polk’s mind, if it was anywhere.
JBG
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2006 by The Recorder
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