ERIE — A defense lawyer hopes evidence of his client's volatile personality will convince a jury she didn't mastermind a 2003 bank robbery that turned a pizza delivery man into a walking time bomb.

But that sometimes-abrasive personality was on display — and aimed at the attorney himself — when Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong cursed at him during the first day of jury selection for her federal trial in Erie.

"I either pick the jurors or I walk ... out of here right now!" Diehl-Armstrong proclaimed loudly to her lawyer, Douglas Sughrue, as they reviewed questionnaires filled out by 47 potential jurors on Tuesday.

The outburst was her second of the day. Earlier, she admonished Sughrue about problems she was having with prison officials. No jurors were in the courtroom during either outburst.

Diehl-Armstrong, already imprisoned for killing her boyfriend, is charged with armed bank robbery and other counts for allegedly hatching a complicated scheme that left 46-year-old Brian Wells dead. Federal prosecutors say Wells was forced to rob a bank while wearing a bomb locked to his neck, a device that exploded as he sat handcuffed in a parking lot as police waited for a bomb squad to arrive.

Prosecutors contend Diehl-Armstrong hoped the robbery would net $250,000, which she allegedly planned to use to hire her co-defendant and former fishing buddy, Kenneth Barnes, to kill her estranged father. Barnes, 56, has pleaded guilty and is serving 45 years in prison for his role. He's expected to be a key witness against Diehl-Armstrong.

Sughrue revealed Tuesday that Diehl-Armstrong also will testify.

He referenced her planned testimony when he asked the judge to allow Diehl-Armstrong's longtime psychiatrist to take the stand. Sughrue successfully argued that Dr. Robert Sadoff's testimony is necessary to explain Diehl-Armstrong's bipolar and paranoid disorders.

Besides yelling at her attorney about jury selection, she exploded in a torrent of obscenities at Sughrue soon after she was brough to the courtroom.

Diehl-Armstrong is being treated for metastasized breast cancer and was apparently upset about not getting her medication before Tuesday's court appearance. After Sughrue told her how she might better raise that issue with jail officials, she blew up.

"I don't want to hear about how to talk to the prison people," she said. "I've been in prison for ... years. I don't need Doug Sughrue, who's never been in prison a single day, telling me how to act."

She went on to berate Sughrue for losing certain pretrial arguments, saying that he has "handcuffed" her and loudly shouting that she shouldn't have even been indicted in the case.

Sughrue is the third defense attorney to represent Diehl-Armstrong. She fired the other two because she was dissatisfied with what she perceived to be a lack of competence.