The trial is on Court TV as I write this. The reporter states, looking though her fact sheets, that she sees that the jury will not be told of the 1977 incident where Phil pulled a gun on Leonard Cohen in a lobby --
He pointed it at Cohen's chest, wavied his other arm, then said "I love you Leonard." Our master wordsmith responded "I sure hope so Phil."
Spector Trial
It seems that trial took a bad turn for Spector today:
Spector judge says criminologist hid evidence
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4071526a5620.html
The Superior Court Judge in Phil Spector's murder trial ruled on Wednesday, May 23rd that noted forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee removed evidence from the scene where Lana Clarkson was murdered.
The prosecution claims that the missing object is a piece of Clarkson's fingernail, which, with a trace of a passing bullet, would prove that Spector's gun was forcibly shoved in her mouth.
Dem
Spector judge says criminologist hid evidence
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4071526a5620.html
The Superior Court Judge in Phil Spector's murder trial ruled on Wednesday, May 23rd that noted forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee removed evidence from the scene where Lana Clarkson was murdered.
The prosecution claims that the missing object is a piece of Clarkson's fingernail, which, with a trace of a passing bullet, would prove that Spector's gun was forcibly shoved in her mouth.
Dem
Re: Spector Trial
Spector Judge Likely to Admit Writings
By LINDA DEUTSCH
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 31, 2007; 11:40 PM
LOS ANGELES -- The judge in Phil Spector's murder trial said Thursday he will likely allow the defense to introduce gunshot victim Lana Clarkson's writings about having visions of a dead actress who killed herself with a gun.
Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler made the statements after intense arguments in which defense attorney Christopher Plourd said the writings found on her computer hard drive also include discussions of her fascination with guns, depression over her failing acting career, and struggles with alcohol and drugs.
Prosecutors acknowledged they knew about the material but considered it untrustworthy and did not alert the coroner who concluded that Clarkson was a homicide victim.
Clarkson died of a shot fired inside her mouth in the foyer of Spector's mansion more than four years ago after going home with him from her job as a nightclub hostess. Spector's defense contends Clarkson killed herself.
The issue emerged as Deputy Medical Examiner Louis Pena testified he did not consider doing a "psychological autopsy" on Clarkson. He said information he obtained about Clarkson convinced him she was a hopeful person with no tendency toward suicide. A psychological autopsy is done only at the family's request if a death is a suicide, he said.
Asked whether he considered the writings, Pena said they weren't provided to him. Plourd asked whether his opinion would have changed if they had been, and the judge dismissed jurors so the issue could be discussed outside of their presence.
Once jurors were gone, Plourd disclosed some of the contents of the writings, including a Clarkson composition called "The Story of My Life."
In the document, Plourd said, she discussed having had drug problems in her youth and said she drank 17 shots of tequila on her 17th birthday.
"She has delusions," Plourd said, "She's seeing people who are deceased and talks to them. She talks about seeing a dead actress who comes to her in visions, a struggling actress who didn't make it and killed herself with a gun."
He also cited e-mails Clarkson sent to a friend in which she said she was despairing over money and wanted to get her affairs in order and "chuck it." He argued Pena should be questioned about whether the writings would have influenced his ruling.
"If you consider this information, it weakens and shakes his opinion," Plourd said.
Plourd said that a district attorney's investigator read the diary and concluded it didn't contain anything relevant to the case. Prosecutors gave it to the coroner's office as part of a bundle of information and said they could look at it if they wanted to do a psychological autopsy, he said.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson said the writings were not authenticated, could not be relied upon and were probably done for a writing class Clarkson was taking.
The judge, who at one point referred to the writings as a "memoir," appeared to disagree.
"I think you are arguing way too much," Fidler said to Jackson. "If you have the words of a deceased ... how do you keep that away from the jury and away from an expert who could have considered it?"
The judge said he would read the entire manuscript over the weekend and make a ruling. But before court ended, he said he had read some of it and was inclined to admit it in evidence.
Also Thursday, defense attorney Roger Rosen complained that prosecutors had subpoenaed New York University for forensic expert Henry Lee's undergraduate record.
Last week, the judge ruled that Lee found evidence during a defense survey of the shooting scene and never provided it to the prosecution. The prosecution claims the item was a piece of Clarkson's fingernail.
"This is tantamount to harassment," said Rosen, who suggested it may have been a move to send a message to Lee, one of the defense's most critical witnesses.
Deputy District Attorney Pat Dixon said he believed the subpoena was sent before the hearing involving Lee ended last week. Lee has denied withholding evidence, said he believes he has been slandered and said the motive is to undermine his upcoming testimony.
Clarkson, 40, was best known for her role in Roger Corman's 1985 cult film "Barbarian Queen." She had gone home with Spector from her job as a hostess at the House of Blues nightclub on the Sunset Strip before the shooting Feb. 3, 2003.
Spector, 67, gained fame in the 1960s with a recording technique known as the "Wall of Sound" that produced many hit records.
By LINDA DEUTSCH
The Associated Press
Thursday, May 31, 2007; 11:40 PM
LOS ANGELES -- The judge in Phil Spector's murder trial said Thursday he will likely allow the defense to introduce gunshot victim Lana Clarkson's writings about having visions of a dead actress who killed herself with a gun.
Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler made the statements after intense arguments in which defense attorney Christopher Plourd said the writings found on her computer hard drive also include discussions of her fascination with guns, depression over her failing acting career, and struggles with alcohol and drugs.
Prosecutors acknowledged they knew about the material but considered it untrustworthy and did not alert the coroner who concluded that Clarkson was a homicide victim.
Clarkson died of a shot fired inside her mouth in the foyer of Spector's mansion more than four years ago after going home with him from her job as a nightclub hostess. Spector's defense contends Clarkson killed herself.
The issue emerged as Deputy Medical Examiner Louis Pena testified he did not consider doing a "psychological autopsy" on Clarkson. He said information he obtained about Clarkson convinced him she was a hopeful person with no tendency toward suicide. A psychological autopsy is done only at the family's request if a death is a suicide, he said.
Asked whether he considered the writings, Pena said they weren't provided to him. Plourd asked whether his opinion would have changed if they had been, and the judge dismissed jurors so the issue could be discussed outside of their presence.
Once jurors were gone, Plourd disclosed some of the contents of the writings, including a Clarkson composition called "The Story of My Life."
In the document, Plourd said, she discussed having had drug problems in her youth and said she drank 17 shots of tequila on her 17th birthday.
"She has delusions," Plourd said, "She's seeing people who are deceased and talks to them. She talks about seeing a dead actress who comes to her in visions, a struggling actress who didn't make it and killed herself with a gun."
He also cited e-mails Clarkson sent to a friend in which she said she was despairing over money and wanted to get her affairs in order and "chuck it." He argued Pena should be questioned about whether the writings would have influenced his ruling.
"If you consider this information, it weakens and shakes his opinion," Plourd said.
Plourd said that a district attorney's investigator read the diary and concluded it didn't contain anything relevant to the case. Prosecutors gave it to the coroner's office as part of a bundle of information and said they could look at it if they wanted to do a psychological autopsy, he said.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson said the writings were not authenticated, could not be relied upon and were probably done for a writing class Clarkson was taking.
The judge, who at one point referred to the writings as a "memoir," appeared to disagree.
"I think you are arguing way too much," Fidler said to Jackson. "If you have the words of a deceased ... how do you keep that away from the jury and away from an expert who could have considered it?"
The judge said he would read the entire manuscript over the weekend and make a ruling. But before court ended, he said he had read some of it and was inclined to admit it in evidence.
Also Thursday, defense attorney Roger Rosen complained that prosecutors had subpoenaed New York University for forensic expert Henry Lee's undergraduate record.
Last week, the judge ruled that Lee found evidence during a defense survey of the shooting scene and never provided it to the prosecution. The prosecution claims the item was a piece of Clarkson's fingernail.
"This is tantamount to harassment," said Rosen, who suggested it may have been a move to send a message to Lee, one of the defense's most critical witnesses.
Deputy District Attorney Pat Dixon said he believed the subpoena was sent before the hearing involving Lee ended last week. Lee has denied withholding evidence, said he believes he has been slandered and said the motive is to undermine his upcoming testimony.
Clarkson, 40, was best known for her role in Roger Corman's 1985 cult film "Barbarian Queen." She had gone home with Spector from her job as a hostess at the House of Blues nightclub on the Sunset Strip before the shooting Feb. 3, 2003.
Spector, 67, gained fame in the 1960s with a recording technique known as the "Wall of Sound" that produced many hit records.
Re: Spector Trial
Review of the new bio on Phil..
REVIEW
Exhaustive try at scaling Spector's psychic walls
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound
The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
By Mick Brown
KNOPF; 452 PAGES; $26.95
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor Phil Spector. Convicted or not, he will now forever be remembered for his involvement in the shooting of actress Lana Clarkson. The cherry on top for Spector may well be this biography by British journalist Mick Brown, a 452-page doorstop that includes an unrelenting catalog of every time the psycho record producer ever brandished a firearm in public.
It would seem that anybody who was anybody in rock music in the '70s had a gun pulled on him by Spector -- John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, the Ramones. Spector's famous friends, such as Ahmet Ertegun, may have treated his fondness for gunplay as a just another one of his many eccentricities, but the dark, disturbing portrait Brown paints in "Tearing Down the Wall of Sound" seems geared from the first sentence to lead inexorably to the night a gun went off in Spector's home almost five years ago.
Fleet Streeter Brown landed a rare 2002 interview with the famously reclusive Spector, who has had a soft spot for England since his 1966 masterpiece, "River Deep Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner, went to No. 3 on the British charts (and only No. 88 in this country). At the time, Spector took out trade ads saying "Benedict Arnold Was Right."
With the sort of serendipity from which book deals are made, Brown's piece for the Sunday Telegraph ran the day before Spector was arrested after Clarkson was found shot to death in the foyer of his Alhambra castle in Los Angeles County.
Spector has been a subject of fascination for years. Journalist Tom Wolfe memorably profiled him as "The First Tycoon of Teen" in 1964. He was the boy wonder behind the Wall of Sound, who wrote his first No. 1 hit while he was still in high school, cribbing the title, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," from his father's tombstone.
He made his first million by the time he was 21 and retired to a life of seclusion five years later. His life read as fiction, but Spector himself always spoiled the story.
His many comeback attempts fizzled. The worst and latest was a couple of tracks he produced with a little-known British band called Starsailor in 2002, a pathetic footnote to one of rock 'n' roll's greatest careers. His public appearances in recent years at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies have been drunken debacles. Any remaining dignity was squandered when he showed up for a court proceeding wearing a grotesque spherical hairpiece, a photo opportunity seen around the world, guaranteeing his status as laughingstock.
Brown chronicles this downfall in unremitting detail -- gunplay by gunplay, failed comeback by failed comeback, drunken public tantrum by drunken public tantrum -- until they blend into one another. He makes the Clarkson episode, whatever the truth is behind what happened that night, seem almost inevitable.
In addition to the endless listing of incidents with guns, Brown keeps coming back to Spector making guests at his home stay late into the night, keeping them from leaving when they wanted. He engages in a fair amount of armchair psychoanalysis, citing Spector's fear of abandonment, which, Brown claims, stems from his father's suicide when Spector was in grade school. Brown contributes little to the existing knowledge of Spector from at least two previous biographies. The best part of his book -- Spector's emergence as a record producer on the New York scene in the early '60s -- was well covered in the 1989 biography, "He's a Rebel" by Mark Ribowsky (recently reissued in paperback). For insight into Spector's Svengali-like relationship with his wife, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, Brown depends almost entirely on material drawn from her 1990 memoir, "Be My Baby."
(Brown also insists on supporting the canard that the recording session sidemen who played the Spector sessions called themselves the Wrecking Crew -- a fanciful conceit concocted by drummer Hal Blaine for the title of his memoirs that annoyed saxophonist Steve Douglas, who contracted most of the Spector studio dates, to the day he died.)
He builds to his climactic chapter -- his four-hour audience with Spector at his castle -- but the interview is only semi-revelatory at best. Spector has been a master of masks all his life, and there's no evidence that Brown captured the man behind the curtain.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... QLLN81.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
REVIEW
Exhaustive try at scaling Spector's psychic walls
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound
The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
By Mick Brown
KNOPF; 452 PAGES; $26.95
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poor Phil Spector. Convicted or not, he will now forever be remembered for his involvement in the shooting of actress Lana Clarkson. The cherry on top for Spector may well be this biography by British journalist Mick Brown, a 452-page doorstop that includes an unrelenting catalog of every time the psycho record producer ever brandished a firearm in public.
It would seem that anybody who was anybody in rock music in the '70s had a gun pulled on him by Spector -- John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, the Ramones. Spector's famous friends, such as Ahmet Ertegun, may have treated his fondness for gunplay as a just another one of his many eccentricities, but the dark, disturbing portrait Brown paints in "Tearing Down the Wall of Sound" seems geared from the first sentence to lead inexorably to the night a gun went off in Spector's home almost five years ago.
Fleet Streeter Brown landed a rare 2002 interview with the famously reclusive Spector, who has had a soft spot for England since his 1966 masterpiece, "River Deep Mountain High" by Ike and Tina Turner, went to No. 3 on the British charts (and only No. 88 in this country). At the time, Spector took out trade ads saying "Benedict Arnold Was Right."
With the sort of serendipity from which book deals are made, Brown's piece for the Sunday Telegraph ran the day before Spector was arrested after Clarkson was found shot to death in the foyer of his Alhambra castle in Los Angeles County.
Spector has been a subject of fascination for years. Journalist Tom Wolfe memorably profiled him as "The First Tycoon of Teen" in 1964. He was the boy wonder behind the Wall of Sound, who wrote his first No. 1 hit while he was still in high school, cribbing the title, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," from his father's tombstone.
He made his first million by the time he was 21 and retired to a life of seclusion five years later. His life read as fiction, but Spector himself always spoiled the story.
His many comeback attempts fizzled. The worst and latest was a couple of tracks he produced with a little-known British band called Starsailor in 2002, a pathetic footnote to one of rock 'n' roll's greatest careers. His public appearances in recent years at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies have been drunken debacles. Any remaining dignity was squandered when he showed up for a court proceeding wearing a grotesque spherical hairpiece, a photo opportunity seen around the world, guaranteeing his status as laughingstock.
Brown chronicles this downfall in unremitting detail -- gunplay by gunplay, failed comeback by failed comeback, drunken public tantrum by drunken public tantrum -- until they blend into one another. He makes the Clarkson episode, whatever the truth is behind what happened that night, seem almost inevitable.
In addition to the endless listing of incidents with guns, Brown keeps coming back to Spector making guests at his home stay late into the night, keeping them from leaving when they wanted. He engages in a fair amount of armchair psychoanalysis, citing Spector's fear of abandonment, which, Brown claims, stems from his father's suicide when Spector was in grade school. Brown contributes little to the existing knowledge of Spector from at least two previous biographies. The best part of his book -- Spector's emergence as a record producer on the New York scene in the early '60s -- was well covered in the 1989 biography, "He's a Rebel" by Mark Ribowsky (recently reissued in paperback). For insight into Spector's Svengali-like relationship with his wife, Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes, Brown depends almost entirely on material drawn from her 1990 memoir, "Be My Baby."
(Brown also insists on supporting the canard that the recording session sidemen who played the Spector sessions called themselves the Wrecking Crew -- a fanciful conceit concocted by drummer Hal Blaine for the title of his memoirs that annoyed saxophonist Steve Douglas, who contracted most of the Spector studio dates, to the day he died.)
He builds to his climactic chapter -- his four-hour audience with Spector at his castle -- but the interview is only semi-revelatory at best. Spector has been a master of masks all his life, and there's no evidence that Brown captured the man behind the curtain.
E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... QLLN81.DTL
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Re: Spector Trial
Interviews going on now also portend a good tv show this coming fall.....
From Times OnlineJune 27, 2007
Spector the recluse bares soul amid his murder trialAdam Sherwin, Media Correspondent
By day Phil Spector, the record producer, attends his trial for the murder by gunshot of an actress. But when the court is adjourned he joins a BBC crew at his mansion to give one of the most extraordinary interviews in television history.
The reclusive star, famed for creating the “Wall of Sound”, had declined requests for television interviews for 35 years. But he has agreed to speak to the BBC for a candid Arena documentary. Spector, 67, is accused of shooting dead B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his Los Angeles mansion in 2003. She died from a single gunshot wound and Spector’s defence is that she committed suicide.
Vikram Jayanti, co-producer of the Oscar-winning Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings, wrote to Spector after his arrest, optimistically seeking an interview. He was invited to bring his team for an extensive series of chats at Spector’s residence. During 60 hours of interview footage conducted so far, Spector, who faces a life sentence, talks of his fears that his musical legacy will be forever overshadowed by the murder case.
He also reflects on working with John Lennon, his rivalry with Brian Wilson, the troubled Beach Boy, and demonstrates at his piano the musical influences that gave rise to the “Wall of Sound”.
During the prosecution case, a string of women gave vivid accounts of being threatened at gunpoint by Spector. Forensics experts suggested that he had shot Clarkson, then attempted a cover-up. Blood had been wiped from the gun allegedly used, the court heard.
But Jayanti said: “I found him civilised and courteous. He is [as] nervous as a man can be because his whole musical contribution could be eclipsed.”
The BBC Two film The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, will be shown in the autumn. Its final form will depend on the outcome of the trial, which is scheduled to end this summer. Jayanti said: “Our interviews have covered an awful lot of ground, including the trial. The position the defence has taken is that she killed herself. I’m trying to stay out of issues of guilt or innocence. I’m more interested in this strange collision between an artistic genius and the criminal justice system.”
The director continued: “I wouldn’t be doing this film if it wasn’t for the trial. When do you get access to somebody who has had that much of an impact on our culture?”
Spector was behind such hits as Be My Baby by the Ronettes and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Fee-lin’ by the Righteous Brothers. He produced the Beatles album Let It Be and worked on John Lennon’s solo records.
He did what?
— Used three pianos, five guitars, two bass players, plus drums and percussion to build his “Wall of Sound”
— Pulled a gun on John Lennon and Leonard Cohen
— Once said: “I would say I’m probably relatively insane, to an extent”
— Showed ex-wife Ronnie Spector a gold coffin with a glass top in his basement, promising to kill and display her if she left him
Source: Times database
From Times OnlineJune 27, 2007
Spector the recluse bares soul amid his murder trialAdam Sherwin, Media Correspondent
By day Phil Spector, the record producer, attends his trial for the murder by gunshot of an actress. But when the court is adjourned he joins a BBC crew at his mansion to give one of the most extraordinary interviews in television history.
The reclusive star, famed for creating the “Wall of Sound”, had declined requests for television interviews for 35 years. But he has agreed to speak to the BBC for a candid Arena documentary. Spector, 67, is accused of shooting dead B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his Los Angeles mansion in 2003. She died from a single gunshot wound and Spector’s defence is that she committed suicide.
Vikram Jayanti, co-producer of the Oscar-winning Muhammad Ali documentary When We Were Kings, wrote to Spector after his arrest, optimistically seeking an interview. He was invited to bring his team for an extensive series of chats at Spector’s residence. During 60 hours of interview footage conducted so far, Spector, who faces a life sentence, talks of his fears that his musical legacy will be forever overshadowed by the murder case.
He also reflects on working with John Lennon, his rivalry with Brian Wilson, the troubled Beach Boy, and demonstrates at his piano the musical influences that gave rise to the “Wall of Sound”.
During the prosecution case, a string of women gave vivid accounts of being threatened at gunpoint by Spector. Forensics experts suggested that he had shot Clarkson, then attempted a cover-up. Blood had been wiped from the gun allegedly used, the court heard.
But Jayanti said: “I found him civilised and courteous. He is [as] nervous as a man can be because his whole musical contribution could be eclipsed.”
The BBC Two film The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, will be shown in the autumn. Its final form will depend on the outcome of the trial, which is scheduled to end this summer. Jayanti said: “Our interviews have covered an awful lot of ground, including the trial. The position the defence has taken is that she killed herself. I’m trying to stay out of issues of guilt or innocence. I’m more interested in this strange collision between an artistic genius and the criminal justice system.”
The director continued: “I wouldn’t be doing this film if it wasn’t for the trial. When do you get access to somebody who has had that much of an impact on our culture?”
Spector was behind such hits as Be My Baby by the Ronettes and You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Fee-lin’ by the Righteous Brothers. He produced the Beatles album Let It Be and worked on John Lennon’s solo records.
He did what?
— Used three pianos, five guitars, two bass players, plus drums and percussion to build his “Wall of Sound”
— Pulled a gun on John Lennon and Leonard Cohen
— Once said: “I would say I’m probably relatively insane, to an extent”
— Showed ex-wife Ronnie Spector a gold coffin with a glass top in his basement, promising to kill and display her if she left him
Source: Times database
Re: Spector Trial
I've just gotten the chance to read these last two entries.
So, regarding the posting previous to this last one, whatever happened with the judge's decision on admitting the additional evidence.
~ Lizzy
So, regarding the posting previous to this last one, whatever happened with the judge's decision on admitting the additional evidence.
Reading what I read in that posting, it sure would be relevant to me for anyone I knew charged with murder. I suspect this would include the investigator, as well, if the tables were turned.Plourd said that a district attorney's investigator read the diary and concluded it didn't contain anything relevant to the case.
~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
~ Oscar Wilde
Re: Spector Trial
They just reported on NPR that the Spector trial is in the process of coming to an end, with the jurors being taken out to his mansion to see the foyer, et al.
~ Lizzy
~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
~ Oscar Wilde
Re: Spector Trial
LA Weekly has very descriptive account of the closing arguments on Friday. Links at the end also provide a thorough blow by blow of April till now. Anybody want to guess the outcome? You need to go to the site for the "More Phil Noir" links to be active.
http://www.laweekly.com/general/a-consi ... are/17180/
PHIL NOIR: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STARE
Phil Spector’s trial reaches its endgame
BY STEVEN MIKULAN Friday, September 7, 2007 - 10:00 am
For three years music legend Phil Spector, now 67, has stood accused of a crime more heinous even than his production of Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Lady’s Man album. In the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, Spector picked up Lana Clarkson, a down-on-her-luck actress, at the House of Blues, where she worked as a $9-an-hour hostess. The couple, who had never met before, were driven to Spector’s “castle” in Alhambra. Shortly before dawn a gun belonging to Spector fired a bullet into Clarkson’s mouth, killing her. Spector and an evolving retinue of lawyers and forensics experts claimed that the 40-year-old Clarkson shot herself — either accidentally or intentionally. The District Attorney’s office begged to differ and in 2004 indicted Spector for second-degree murder. Now, after more than four months, the trial is reaching its endgame, with the two sides presenting their closing arguments.
The defense, having last week lost its flamboyant New York attorney, Bruce Cutler, left it to science lawyer Linda Kenney Baden to wrap things up Thursday. As soon as she began, however, it was clear Kenney Baden lacked Cutler’s showmanship and even the rhetorical polish of her Team Spector colleague Roger Rosen. For the occasion she wore a double lei of turquoise rocks that may either have been a gift from her husband Michael or were on loan from Wilma Flintstone.
The Jersey-accented Kenney Baden came out swinging and offered few cordialities beyond a quick “good morning” to the jury. From the start her voice was hard, fast and declarative. It did not invite the listener to imagine possibilities or linger on nuances, but instead commanded jurors to weigh evidence favorable to her client. Standing at a podium that was now turned toward the jury box, she gripped a three-ring binder containing the notes to which she frequently referred. Her PowerPoint production values seemed rudimentary at best — Kenney Baden often threw up entire pages of trial transcripts onto a screen that jurors may or may not have bothered to squint through. It didn’t help matters that Judge Larry Paul Fidler attended to his paper work during part of her presentation.
Yet after the lunch recess Kenney Baden returned calmer and more self-assured, regaining some of the maternal charm she had projected in her opening remarks last April. Her job today was to remind jurors of all the evidence that might help Spector while also rehabilitating the defense’s expert witnesses who had been so flayed by prosecutor Alan Jackson’s cross-examinations. She doggedly stuck to a rush-to-judgment theme as her PowerPoint reminded jurors that “reasonable doubt” was enough to let Spector walk.
She did a credible job underscoring the lack of blood and gunshot residue on the cream-colored jacket Spector wore the night Clarkson died and even turned to her advantage a glib comparison that prosecutor Pat Dixon had used months ago to dismiss the idea that Clarkson’s messy home suggested an unraveling mind. Back then Dixon had said that Clarkson’s Venice cottage, which she had apparently once trashed in a pique of frustration, was not the abode of a latent suicide, but that of someone merely untidy, someone, maybe, like Owen Wilson — who just this past week was hospitalized for attempted suicide.
Still, Kenney Baden was no match for Alan Jackson’s preceding closing argument, whose waltzing grace and seeming spontaneity made it sound like one long, extemporaneous soliloquy. Listening to Jackson, who rarely referred to his notes, was sort of like hearing Carl Sagan rhapsodize about the Milky Way, except Jackson was describing how Spector had turned Clarkson’s mouth into a bloody pulp before wiping her face with a diaper soaked in toilet water.
Early in this trial the Texan’s down-home drawl, Jimmy Stewart humility and moral outrage came off as a little precious. But these seeming deficiencies only emboldened his opponents to underestimate him to their great cost, and it’s now revealed that within Jackson lives a great actor who is genuinely moved by his own words, as much as by the justness of his cause. There were moments when he looked at the jurors the way a Baptist preacher who is filled with the Holy Ghost regards his flock.
Even Jackson’s PowerPoint presentation had improved since his April opening statement — title cards appeared in courier font as though they were typewritten headings from a screenplay, while black-and-white photographs of expert witnesses from what he dubbed the “Checkbook Defense” emerged in the kind of wired diagrams Congress uses when investigating the Mafia. Finally, an image of the scales of justice loomed in the background of many slides. If Jackson’s PowerPoint had come with music it would’ve been the Tannhauser overture.
Jackson mostly stood by the podium but sometimes easily moved about and at one point actually sat down, Walt Disney-style, before the jurors and opened his binder of notes as though to read them a bedtime story. That this fairy tale was about an evil old man who lured a golden-haired damsel into his haunted castle and killed her was beside the point. Jackson’s once-upon-a-time was the story of the first crime, a timeless fable of man’s primal madness and vanity. He was subtle, too — seeming to compliment Bruce Cutler’s James Cagney impersonation but really mentioning Cutler to draw attention to the defense lawyer’s departure.
Jackson was also nervy — claiming that the forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee did not appear for the defense because he knew its 72-inch-blood-spatter theory was bunk, while hammering Dr. Michael Baden for appearing for the defense because Baden’s wife was being paid by the defendant, as was the doctor. (If Baden had not testified, Jackson could have pointed to his absence as evidence that Baden did not believe in Spector’s case.)
Closing statements are to be considered as purely argumentative and not as evidence. I’m still betting on a hung jury, but it remains an open question as to what effect the concluding war of words will have on its intended audience. One juror, after all, briefly played around with his cell phone during part of Jackson’s performance, and, under defense objections, Judge Fidler called out Jackson on some infractions, but basically just handed him fix-it tickets. Kenney Baden finished her summation just before noon on Friday. She was followed by an almost psychedelically rambling rebuttal by Pat Dixon that ended the day and the DA’s case against Spector.
As this long trial winds down, a strange exhilaration has electrified both sides. Giddy laughter fills the hallways of the ninth floor, where the courtroom is located, as well as on the 13th, which serves as an informal Green Room for the defense. Even Phil Spector, sporting a darker hairstyle above his dead-eye stare, succumbs to moments of animation. But more noticeable is how little attention his trial is drawing, even now. The court had set aside another courtroom for anticipated media overflow this week, only to discover the room wasn’t needed. A few more reporters have drifted in, along with a handful of extra spectators, but so far none of the crush that was expected. The verdict will probably arrive next week, however, and with it evidence of just how much this spectacle has become part of the dream life of Los Angeles.
More Phil Noir: (links in the online article)
Murder of an Anatomy: Spector’s surreal surrebuttal
Court Gesture: Dr. Baden’s ah-ha! moment
Avenue of the Scars: The jurors see Lana Unleashed
Spattered: Doctor Death’s trigger-nometry lesson, plus reluctant witness Sara Caplan speaks to L.A. Weekly
In a Lonely Place: With friends like Punkin Pie...
Theater of Pain: What made Lana run?
Doc Day Afternoon: Cross-examination holds DiMaio
The Heart of the Spatter: Jurors get put on a strict science diet
The Human Stain How Spector left his mark on Lana Clarkson
Like Watching Blood Dry A slow trial suddenly goes ballistic
The Tooth of Crime A coroner gets examined and cross-examined
Doth the Doc Protest Too Much? Criminalist Henry Lee lashes out at critics
Hassle in the Castle The night the cops had Phil Spector by the short hairs
Murder As a Second Language As questions about defense attorney Bruce Cutler’s effectiveness circulate, immigrant witnesses place new accents on shooting timeline
Marlowe vs. CSI? The Tycoon of Teen’s Gun Problem The Phil Spector verdict is months away and Bruce Cutler’s wardrobe has not yet begun to fight
Accidental Suicide Guns, slips and semiotics
A Spectator at the Spector Trial Tell it to the judge: Bruce Cutler's California adventure
http://www.laweekly.com/general/a-consi ... are/17180/
PHIL NOIR: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STARE
Phil Spector’s trial reaches its endgame
BY STEVEN MIKULAN Friday, September 7, 2007 - 10:00 am
For three years music legend Phil Spector, now 67, has stood accused of a crime more heinous even than his production of Leonard Cohen’s Death of a Lady’s Man album. In the early morning hours of February 3, 2003, Spector picked up Lana Clarkson, a down-on-her-luck actress, at the House of Blues, where she worked as a $9-an-hour hostess. The couple, who had never met before, were driven to Spector’s “castle” in Alhambra. Shortly before dawn a gun belonging to Spector fired a bullet into Clarkson’s mouth, killing her. Spector and an evolving retinue of lawyers and forensics experts claimed that the 40-year-old Clarkson shot herself — either accidentally or intentionally. The District Attorney’s office begged to differ and in 2004 indicted Spector for second-degree murder. Now, after more than four months, the trial is reaching its endgame, with the two sides presenting their closing arguments.
The defense, having last week lost its flamboyant New York attorney, Bruce Cutler, left it to science lawyer Linda Kenney Baden to wrap things up Thursday. As soon as she began, however, it was clear Kenney Baden lacked Cutler’s showmanship and even the rhetorical polish of her Team Spector colleague Roger Rosen. For the occasion she wore a double lei of turquoise rocks that may either have been a gift from her husband Michael or were on loan from Wilma Flintstone.
The Jersey-accented Kenney Baden came out swinging and offered few cordialities beyond a quick “good morning” to the jury. From the start her voice was hard, fast and declarative. It did not invite the listener to imagine possibilities or linger on nuances, but instead commanded jurors to weigh evidence favorable to her client. Standing at a podium that was now turned toward the jury box, she gripped a three-ring binder containing the notes to which she frequently referred. Her PowerPoint production values seemed rudimentary at best — Kenney Baden often threw up entire pages of trial transcripts onto a screen that jurors may or may not have bothered to squint through. It didn’t help matters that Judge Larry Paul Fidler attended to his paper work during part of her presentation.
Yet after the lunch recess Kenney Baden returned calmer and more self-assured, regaining some of the maternal charm she had projected in her opening remarks last April. Her job today was to remind jurors of all the evidence that might help Spector while also rehabilitating the defense’s expert witnesses who had been so flayed by prosecutor Alan Jackson’s cross-examinations. She doggedly stuck to a rush-to-judgment theme as her PowerPoint reminded jurors that “reasonable doubt” was enough to let Spector walk.
She did a credible job underscoring the lack of blood and gunshot residue on the cream-colored jacket Spector wore the night Clarkson died and even turned to her advantage a glib comparison that prosecutor Pat Dixon had used months ago to dismiss the idea that Clarkson’s messy home suggested an unraveling mind. Back then Dixon had said that Clarkson’s Venice cottage, which she had apparently once trashed in a pique of frustration, was not the abode of a latent suicide, but that of someone merely untidy, someone, maybe, like Owen Wilson — who just this past week was hospitalized for attempted suicide.
Still, Kenney Baden was no match for Alan Jackson’s preceding closing argument, whose waltzing grace and seeming spontaneity made it sound like one long, extemporaneous soliloquy. Listening to Jackson, who rarely referred to his notes, was sort of like hearing Carl Sagan rhapsodize about the Milky Way, except Jackson was describing how Spector had turned Clarkson’s mouth into a bloody pulp before wiping her face with a diaper soaked in toilet water.
Early in this trial the Texan’s down-home drawl, Jimmy Stewart humility and moral outrage came off as a little precious. But these seeming deficiencies only emboldened his opponents to underestimate him to their great cost, and it’s now revealed that within Jackson lives a great actor who is genuinely moved by his own words, as much as by the justness of his cause. There were moments when he looked at the jurors the way a Baptist preacher who is filled with the Holy Ghost regards his flock.
Even Jackson’s PowerPoint presentation had improved since his April opening statement — title cards appeared in courier font as though they were typewritten headings from a screenplay, while black-and-white photographs of expert witnesses from what he dubbed the “Checkbook Defense” emerged in the kind of wired diagrams Congress uses when investigating the Mafia. Finally, an image of the scales of justice loomed in the background of many slides. If Jackson’s PowerPoint had come with music it would’ve been the Tannhauser overture.
Jackson mostly stood by the podium but sometimes easily moved about and at one point actually sat down, Walt Disney-style, before the jurors and opened his binder of notes as though to read them a bedtime story. That this fairy tale was about an evil old man who lured a golden-haired damsel into his haunted castle and killed her was beside the point. Jackson’s once-upon-a-time was the story of the first crime, a timeless fable of man’s primal madness and vanity. He was subtle, too — seeming to compliment Bruce Cutler’s James Cagney impersonation but really mentioning Cutler to draw attention to the defense lawyer’s departure.
Jackson was also nervy — claiming that the forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee did not appear for the defense because he knew its 72-inch-blood-spatter theory was bunk, while hammering Dr. Michael Baden for appearing for the defense because Baden’s wife was being paid by the defendant, as was the doctor. (If Baden had not testified, Jackson could have pointed to his absence as evidence that Baden did not believe in Spector’s case.)
Closing statements are to be considered as purely argumentative and not as evidence. I’m still betting on a hung jury, but it remains an open question as to what effect the concluding war of words will have on its intended audience. One juror, after all, briefly played around with his cell phone during part of Jackson’s performance, and, under defense objections, Judge Fidler called out Jackson on some infractions, but basically just handed him fix-it tickets. Kenney Baden finished her summation just before noon on Friday. She was followed by an almost psychedelically rambling rebuttal by Pat Dixon that ended the day and the DA’s case against Spector.
As this long trial winds down, a strange exhilaration has electrified both sides. Giddy laughter fills the hallways of the ninth floor, where the courtroom is located, as well as on the 13th, which serves as an informal Green Room for the defense. Even Phil Spector, sporting a darker hairstyle above his dead-eye stare, succumbs to moments of animation. But more noticeable is how little attention his trial is drawing, even now. The court had set aside another courtroom for anticipated media overflow this week, only to discover the room wasn’t needed. A few more reporters have drifted in, along with a handful of extra spectators, but so far none of the crush that was expected. The verdict will probably arrive next week, however, and with it evidence of just how much this spectacle has become part of the dream life of Los Angeles.
More Phil Noir: (links in the online article)
Murder of an Anatomy: Spector’s surreal surrebuttal
Court Gesture: Dr. Baden’s ah-ha! moment
Avenue of the Scars: The jurors see Lana Unleashed
Spattered: Doctor Death’s trigger-nometry lesson, plus reluctant witness Sara Caplan speaks to L.A. Weekly
In a Lonely Place: With friends like Punkin Pie...
Theater of Pain: What made Lana run?
Doc Day Afternoon: Cross-examination holds DiMaio
The Heart of the Spatter: Jurors get put on a strict science diet
The Human Stain How Spector left his mark on Lana Clarkson
Like Watching Blood Dry A slow trial suddenly goes ballistic
The Tooth of Crime A coroner gets examined and cross-examined
Doth the Doc Protest Too Much? Criminalist Henry Lee lashes out at critics
Hassle in the Castle The night the cops had Phil Spector by the short hairs
Murder As a Second Language As questions about defense attorney Bruce Cutler’s effectiveness circulate, immigrant witnesses place new accents on shooting timeline
Marlowe vs. CSI? The Tycoon of Teen’s Gun Problem The Phil Spector verdict is months away and Bruce Cutler’s wardrobe has not yet begun to fight
Accidental Suicide Guns, slips and semiotics
A Spectator at the Spector Trial Tell it to the judge: Bruce Cutler's California adventure