How Phil Spector was convicted of the murder of Lana ClarksonDan Glaister in Los Angeles
Tuesday 14 April 2009
The second trial of Harvey Phillip Spector for the murder of Lana Clarkson was dominated by one phrase: "I think I killed someone." The 69-year-old record producer, creator of pop's "wall of sound", was said to have uttered that phrase as he emerged from his home in the small hours of Monday, 3 February 2003.
Behind him, slumped in a fake Louis XIV chair, lay the body of Clarkson, a 40-year-old actor he had met earlier that night when she was working at the House of Blues venue on the Sunset Strip
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For the second trial, almost six years after Clarkson's death, Spector downsized. Gone was the retinue of heavies that had marched into court with him every day the first time around. He was accompanied by just one bodyguard, and his young wife, Rachelle. His legal team was reduced to a single lawyer, Doron Weinberg. Facing him was the same lead prosecutor from the first trial, Alan Jackson.
Without the theatrics of that trial, Weinberg's speciality was studied doubt. De Souza, he noted, had been through eight variations of the phrase "I think I killed someone" in recounting events to investigators. Surely that suggested sufficient doubt to acquit, Weinberg argued.
But ultimately, Spector came up against a barrage of evidence. Clarkson had given no indication that she was suicidal, the defence's proffered explanation. Why would someone who was just about to shoot themselves go out and buy multiple pairs of shoes? The trial heard expert testimony that people rarely kill themselves on the spur of the moment, and almost never at the home of a stranger.
More damning for the defence was the judge's decision in both trials to allow evidence of prior acts by Spector involving women and guns. A parade of women at both trials described how Spector had turned from charm to menace, often fuelled by alcohol and medication. His penchant for waving guns in people's faces, they recounted, suggested an accident waiting to happen.
The gruesome imagery from the crime scene also made an impression the defence found hard to dispel. The dead actor, a cult success for her incarnation of the Barbarian Queen in the eponymous film, was reduced to a film noir cliche: the blonde starlet sprawled on a chair, the bottom of her mouth blown off, a 36 Colt under her left leg. Spector's assertions to interviewers before the first trial that she was the victim of accidental suicide never seemed more ridiculous.
...more at linkhttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/a ... son-murder