Whoever Has That Stamp On His Hand Is Insane

Have you heard of California vs. Susan Polk?  Really, I'm not too concerned about California here, Ms. Polk is the interesting one.  A summary of the background:

Susan Polk was married to Felix Polk, a psychiatrist, and was in the midst of a rather nasty divorce battle.  Then, Felix Polk's body was found next to their pool with 27 stab wounds in it.

What's known for certain: Felix Polk was stabbed by Susan Polk.  Neither side denies this.  However, the prosecution claims that it was unprovoked, whilst the defence claims that the relationship was abusive, and Susan Polk stabbed her estranged husband only after he attacked her.  Nothing unusual here, except for one thing: the defence lawyer is Susan Polk herself, and she's completely utterly bat-shit insane.

To sum up her side of it: she's psychic, and her husband (who she claims was a deep-cover Mossad agent) was drugging her into trances to obtain her predictions.  Among the things she predicted: the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and the death of Princess Di.  And the trial?  A conspiracy to rob her of her inheritance.  The cops, the judge, the prosecutor, two of her sons — they're all in on it.  In fact, probably the only person (beside herself) who doesn't appear to be in on it is one of her three sons, and as a result of not going along with the conspiracy he's been charged (and convicted) of domestic assault.

Unfortunately, the trial itself has ended, meaning there're no more daily doses of the crazy, but the jury still hasn't reached its verdict.  I'm going with a result of guilty, not because I truly think she is, but because the jury has had to put up with three months of pointless and wandering testimony on her part, which likely both antagonised them and made the prosecution's case look that much tighter.  (Part of her line of questioning with one of her sons involved who was now taking care of the family dog.  Why?  Because she wanted to know how the dog was doing.)

If you want to enjoy doses of the crazy, CourtTV has an entire section of their site devoted to her.  You can browse through the archives and find out that she mentioned that she does believe in fairies in her opening argument (no word on if hand-clapping was involved), that she once objected because "the judge was making faces", that she claims to have never accused her former lawyer of being behind the murder of his wife (despite media records that quote her directly), and other oddities.  (At one point, she averaged one objection every 30 minutes for several hours straight, and that's not counting the motions for a mistrial.)

Oddly enough, I think if she really wanted to she probably could get in a valid motion for a mistrial.  However, it's unlikely to happen, as I personally think that her best chance of that is by claiming that the judge should never have declared her mentally fit to defend herself.  (She is, quite obviously and regardless of all else, delusional.  Either that, or my conspiracy membership card got lost in the mail, as I seem to be the only person not in on it.)  Of course, since that would involve admitting that her worldview might be slightly less than firmly grounded in reality, don't expect this to happen in the least; one thing that comes out of her actions is her infallible belief in the fact that she's right.