After almost 43 hours of deliberation over 12 days, the 12 jurors in the Phil Spector murder trial told the judge on Wednesday that they were unable to reach a verdict. Faced with a 10-2 split in favour of conviction, the judge declared a mistrial.
The legendary 1960s pop producer sat motionless, eyes cast down, as Judge Larry Fidler said the trial was being abandoned. Had he been found guilty of second degree murder, Spector would have faced spending the rest of his life in prison.
Last week the jury had announced they were hung seven-five. The judge gave them fresh instructions on how to reach a verdict.
”The defence definitely dodged a bullet,” said Stanley Goldman, a law professor who has followed the trial. ”The reinstruction last week was definitely the judge nudging the jury towards finding Spector guilty.” He remains on $1-million bail, while the prosecution and defence will reconvene with the judge on October 3 to decide what happens next.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles district attorney, who brought the case, said they would seek a retrial. Alan Jackson, the lead prosecutor, has a record of seeking further trials in the case of a hung jury, and it is likely the case will be retried, possibly as early as next month.
The trial arose from the February 2003 death of Lana Clarkson, a 40-year-old actor and waiter, killed by a single gunshot to the mouth. Her body was found in the entrance hall of Spector’s Los Angeles mansion in the early hours of February 3.
The alarm was raised when Spector’s chauffeur, Adriano de Souza, heard a gunshot while sitting outside Spector’s house. As he got out of the car he saw Spector emerge from the house carrying a gun to say: ”I think I killed somebody.”
His testimony became key to the trial, as Spector’s expensive legal team attempted to discredit the driver’s memory and his English. But he stood firm under cross-examination. The defence also emphasised forensic evidence in the trial, declaring at its April opening that science would prevail. But in a series of setbacks the integrity of its experts was attacked.
The lack of a verdict is a blow to the meticulous preparation by the district attorney’s office. Led by Jackson, the prosecution was criticised for taking so long to come to trial. But it was argued that the prosecution, mindful of high-profile cases such as the OJ Simpson trial when celebrities seemed to buy their way out of trouble, was preparing a cast iron case.
Throughout the trial Clarkson’s family sat tense in the front row of the courtroom, within a few feet of Spector. Her mother and sister stared rigidly ahead throughout often gruelling testimony, averting their gaze from more explicit photos of her and only choosing to leave the courtroom for the detailed discussion of the autopsy.
The trial opened four years after Clarkson’s death. On the night in 2003, Spector made one of his customary forays beyond the iron railings ringing his hilltop mansion. Driven by De Souza, he visited four of his regular Hollywood haunts in the company of three different women.
Unlike on recent excursions, this time Spector was drinking: ”navy grog” at one spot, tequila at another. With this taken on top of his medication — Prozac, Neurontin and tetracycline — Spector, the prosecution argued, was out of control.
His night ended at the House of Blues, where he met Clarkson, recently begun there as a hostess. The two got off to an unfortunate start, with her mistaking him for a woman. But by the time the club closed, Spector had persuaded her to accompany him home for a nightcap. Little more than two hours later she was dead. When police arrived, alerted by the chauffeur, they found her body slumped in a fake Louis XIV chair in the vestibule to the 30-room mansion, a gun under her left leg, her bag over her right shoulder.
Prosecutors suggested Spector, emboldened by alcohol, had done something he had threatened on other past occasions: he had shot a woman who tried to leave his company. The prosecution produced a succession of women to testify how the normally polite and charming Spector would become a monster, waving guns in their faces and threatening to blow their brains out. Clarkson’s death, prosecutors suggested, was an accident waiting to happen.
Spector’s defence countered with science leavened with gossip about Clarkson. The science centred on the contention that the blood spatter on his white jacket confirmed he could not have been standing close enough to her to have fired the fatal shot. A string of Clarkson’s friends attested to her instability, as well as her penchant for guns and liquor.
But the defence assertion that the prosecutors were looking to get a celebrity conviction was undone by the absence of public interest in the plight of the man who once had carried the title of ”tycoon of teen”.
Struggles of a would-be starlet
Two images of Lana Clarkson endure after the trial. In photograph after photograph displayed on an overhead projector in the courtroom, the actor, children’s entertainer and nightclub hostess was shown in a series of coquettish poses: smiling at awards ceremonies or with friends at parties, she was the embodiment of the blonde, leggy starlet she dreamed of being.
The other image, shown almost as frequently during the trial, was of her dead body slumped at an awkward angle in an ornate chair in the lobby of Spector’s mansion, handbag hanging from her shoulder.
Despite the graphic images, the real Clarkson remained an obscure figure during the trial. She was depressed, she took pharmaceutical drugs, she liked to drink, she knew how to ride horses, she had handled firearms. She was also desperate for success, looking for ways to relaunch her career as she entered her 40s. Did all this make her likely to commit suicide as the defence insisted? Or was she the determined professional the prosecution sought to depict? Ultimately the jury could not decide.
Now a retrial looms, and a civil case brought by Clarkson’s family. – Guardian Unlimited Â