Hollywood Deep

The jury in the Phil Spector murder trial are officially at an impasse and deadlocked at 7-5 vote. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler announced the latest twist in the celebrity trial that has been a fixture in a high-security Los Angeles courtroom since April. The jury believes it is split into almost equal camps and is unable to decide whether the famed music producer shot an actress to death more than four years ago. The jury has indicated that the problem is that they can not agree on whether Spector actually pulled the trigger, killing Lana Clarkson that night. Reasonable doubt is a bitch in these cases. Especially with high profile defendants who can afford to bring in a parade of top lawyers and expert witnesses to raise doubt in the minds of the jury. Like OJ and Robert Blake before him, Phil Spector’s legal team has made mince meat out of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office.

Spector is charged with shooting actress Clarkson, 40, on Feb. 3, 2003, hours after they met for the first time at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she was working as a hostess in the VIP area. If convicted, Spector, 67, could spend the rest of his life in prison. It was a fiercely fought trial that put fame and science on display. Spector’s legal battle followed along the lines of those of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Robert Blake. Other cases the LA District Attorneys were not able to get a conviction.

Prosecutors contended that Spector shot Clarkson, who was found sitting on a chair in the foyer. The defense insisted that Clarkson had killed herself, calling the death an “accidental suicide” by a woman whose acting career was in eclipse. They lined up a string of forensic experts who insisted that Spector could have been as much as 6 feet away from Clarkson and might even have been moving, too far away to have held the .38-caliber Colt Cobra in Clarkson’s mouth. There in lies the reasonable doubt.

Even though the jury is hung, officials are not giving up on getting a verdict. The trial will resume Thursday as the judge tries to reinstruct jurors on the law. The “dynamite instruction”, although not common in California, may be handed down by the judge. This instruction to the jury basically says to the jury, go back and figure it out. Do what ever it takes to come to a verdict here, there will be no hung jury for now. The other thing the judge may do, is offer a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. This charge says that it was an accidental death at the hands of Spector.

It will be interesting to see what happens on Thursday, but it seems like I’ve seen this before. The handwriting is on the wall for this entire trial to go down the tubes. The lesser charge might help the jury reach a verdict, but if that happens, it leaves Spector grounds for an appeal. If the jury comes back officially hung, then the DA has to decide if it wants to retry the case. At the very least it looks like this case is going to go on for another year or so.

The Los Angeles DA has done it again. They screwed another one up, it seems like no matter how much evidence they have they can’t get a conviction. They should have gone for an insanity conviction. They would have had to prove that Spector was mentally ill, and killed Clarkson as a crazy person. I think that would have been easier for them to prove. It’s obvious, even by just looking at him that Spector is out of his mind. One would just have to tour his wig closet to tell how crazy he is.
…Crazy DEEP!

Phil Spector as crazy as can be / Lana Clarkson- went home with the wrong guy

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