lana clarkson

A mistrial was declared in the murder case against Phil Spector when the jury said it was deadlocked 10-2 in favour of convicting the US music producer of killing actress Lana Clarkson.

The prosecutor's office announced it would seek to retry Spector, and the family of the actress also pledged to press on. A hearing was set for October 3.

"We will not rest until justice is done," said John Taylor, a lawyer for the family.

Jurors had to decide who pulled the trigger of a revolver � leaving no fingerprints � that went off in Clarkson's mouth on February 3, 2003.

The jury foreman told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler the split was 10-2 after 12 days of deliberations.




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A week earlier, the foreman had reported a 7-5 split, and the jurors returned to deliberations with new instructions from the judge.


One juror said they argued over whether Clarkson was suicidal and said the entire jury would have liked to see a psychological profile of the actress.


He said he was also troubled by what Spector, who did not call police, did in the 40 minutes between the death and the time police arrived.


"He acted like a guilty man," the juror said.


The foreman noted that the "inability to reach a decision is controversial to most".


"Even on the jury there's deep regret that we were unable to reach a unanimous verdict," he said.


Prosecutors had called women from Spector's past who claimed he threatened them with guns when they tried to leave his presence, and a chauffeur who testified that on the morning of Clarkson's death, Spector came out of his home with a gun in hand and said, "I think I killed somebody".


The defence offered forensic evidence that Clarkson killed herself � either intentionally or by accident.


Spector, 67, rose to fame in the 1960s with the Wall of Sound recording technique, which revolutionised pop music.


But by the time he met Clarkson, he had aged into an eccentric, reclusive millionaire.


Clarkson, 40, was a statuesque beauty who idolised Marilyn Monroe but was beaten down by rejection.


Jurors heard of her decision to go home with Spector for a drink after her shift as a nightclub hostess ended. Little more than three hours later, she was dead.


What happened in those three hours was never clear. Spector did not testify, and prosecutors stated no motive for him to kill her other than her apparent decision to leave the house.


No prosecution forensic expert was able to place the gun in Spector's hands.


But blood spattered on his coat and in his trouser pockets were analysed by prosecution experts to suggest that it showed he was the shooter. Celebrity music producer Phil Spector had the .38-caliber Cobra in his hand, he had blood on his jacket, the driver heard him say he thought he just killed someone, five women testified that he had brandished guns in their presence, and Spector brushed off his murder rap like a bad wig.

Had two jurors fallen asleep at some point in the five-month trial before telling Judge Larry Paul Fidler on Wednesday that they were hopelessly hung, 10 to 2?

It's a little more complicated than that, but not much.

Believing that someone is guilty, and seeing convincing proof, are two different things. One juror said there were some doubts about the forensics in a case in which the defense team argued that Clarkson killed herself, either in a suicide or by accident, in Spector's Alhambra mansion.

Still, 10 of the 12 jurors believed Spector was guilty, according to a court spokesman.

"I was insulted by the defense and what they threw out," said one clear-headed juror.

So we're left to ask, again, whether celebrity or money had something to do with the verdict, and my bet is definitely on the latter.

Does anyone out there believe some penniless schmo with a dead woman in his house and a gun in his hand would beat the rap if his lawyer was a no-name and he couldn't afford a parade of favorable witnesses?

"He got to buy some experts," said one juror, who voted guilty.

As O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson have proved before Spector, it doesn't hurt your cause if you can spend millions chipping away at the prosecution.

"We will try Phil Spector again," said Sandi Gibbons, speaking for Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley.

I half want to shout, "Please, spare us." I don't know if I can stand to look at Spector's fright wigs and '70s Halloween get-ups for five more months.

But on the other hand, I have more than a little trouble believing actress Lana Clarkson was the killer in the house that night in Alhambra, so let's give Cooley's team another crack at putting Spector away. Maybe now's the time for Cooley to get out of the easy chair and handle this thing himself.

Who knows, maybe Spector blew his entire nest egg on this defense team and won't be able to afford another army of high-priced defenders. I wouldn't be surprised to see him pitch a book to Judith Regan and try to finance another ace squad of hired guns.

We know the title "If I Did It" has been used, so how about "I Think I Killed Somebody, Maybe," or, "I Think I Killed Somebody, Da Doo Ron Ron."

Maybe the Ronettes would let him use "Walking in the Rain," except that with another trial coming up, he might not want to talk about "walking" just yet.

Spector could go with, "I Think O.J. Killed Somebody" and try to pin the whole thing on Simpson. Has anybody asked O.J. where he was that night?

Now that O.J.'s got new legal problems, namely a Las Vegas robbery charge, maybe the two heroes can team up on a Beat the Rap memorabilia tour.

A Heisman, a few Grammys, some old jerseys and autographed album covers. There's got to be a few bucks in all of that, don't you think?

And no shortage of highfalutin attorneys and experts eager to line up for another big payday.
Phil Spector's circle of confidants has shrunk in recent years, but Wednesday, after the district attorney's office pledged to retry the recording industry icon in the slaying of actress and nightclub hostess Lana Clarkson, people close to the producer said that he had embraced the hung jury as a positive sign and was ready to defend himself once again if necessary.

"I spoke to him not 45 minutes ago, and he was very happy and he is ready to handle whatever comes next," longtime friend David Kessel said Wednesday afternoon. Kessel said the 67-year-old Spector, in a moment of relief, told him he was looking forward to munching on a celebratory hot dog at Pink's on La Brea Avenue.


"It was a human moment. I mean it's not real sensational, but it shows he's a human guy and that place is where we have had many lunches," said Kessel, who used to be a member of Spector's elite crew of session musicians and still proudly calls himself a member of "Team Spector."

Another of Spector's friends, musician Paul Body, said that it had been hard for many of the record mogul's supporters to watch the trial coverage and the many unflattering ways in which Spector had been portrayed.

"Nobody knows what happened up there at the house -- it just pains me to see him go through all this and hear what people say," said Body, whose friendship with Spector dates to the late 1980s. "I think he looks the way he looks now because of the trial. It's a lot to go through. . . . At least a mistrial is better than a guilty verdict."

Spector's success story won him many friends over the course of a career that led to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- the musical pioneer worked with the likes of John Lennon, Tina Turner and the Righteous Brothers and became wealthy from royalty checks for his many signature American pop hits. But through the years the producer's well-documented volatility and tantrums cost him some of those acquaintances as well.

One of them was Hal Blaine, the drummer who played on many of Spector's biggest hits and was himself inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Blaine's point of view is skewed by the fact that his daughter, Michele, was a personal assistant to Spector but, after Clarkson's death in 2004, parted ways with Spector amid a bitter dispute.

On Wednesday, Blaine wondered whether the parade of expensive attorneys who represented Spector since his arrest had depleted Spector's fortune. There are also the looming legal bills of perhaps a second criminal trial and an expected civil lawsuit from Clarkson's family.

Win or lose, the continuing legal odyssey probably will cost Spector millions more.

"If he lives through it, he will be broke by the time it's over," Blaine said. "Watching him during the trial, I don't know that he has the ability to start this whole process over again. I wonder if the guy will ever have a happy day again in his life."

But plenty of Spector's longtime friends hope that the beleaguered industry icon will indeed have many happy days left. One is Bob Merlis, a long-respected music industry publicist who worked for many years at Warner Bros. Records and now owns an independent firm.

"It's a fact of life that we are all going to have to live with . . . that he was tried on murder charges and there was not a verdict," Merlis said. "I still communicate with him and I can tell you he is spirited still in his legal defense and involved in his legal situation -- he is deeply, deeply analytical on the court issues and has a grasp of them -- but this has been quite an ordeal. This trial is something I would wish on my worst enemy, but it is not something I would wish on a friend like Phil.

"No matter how many times 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' plays on the radio" -- it is said to be the song with the most U.S. airplay in the 20th century -- "there has to be a point where more money goes out than in," Merlis said.

Marky Ramone, a member of the Ramones, one of the many acts that worked with Spector in his more prominent years, was a supporter during the trial and also speculated Wednesday that there would be leaner financial days ahead for Spector.

"I think if he loses a civil trial, he will have to sell off the publishing rights and the mansion and live a less ostentatious lifestyle. As for the criminal case, I think the D.A. should swallow his pride and move on to something else. I don't think there will be any new evidence, so I don't think there should be a second trial."

But Kessel, one of Spector's confidants dating to the glory days of the 1960s, said he knew "the tank is not empty" and "the money to defend him will not run out."

Kessel declined to be more specific, saying that as one of the people on the trial's witness list he felt uncomfortable going into too many details about his defendant friend, who is free on bail.

Merlis said that Spector, who has been largely a curio figure in the music industry since the early 1980s, seemed to be "on the cusp of a comeback" just before Clarkson's death. That's why, Merlis said, he deeply hopes that Spector can reach a point where "creatively he can return and have great records."

"But if not, he certainly has been involved with a lot of music that will last an eternity."