Phil Spector: Actual Innocence?

I was never a big fan of Phil Spector's music, although I ultimately came to appreciate his work with the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner. I was aware of Spector's reputation for egotism and erratic behavior long before he was charged with the murder of Lana Clarkson. I usually skip over newspaper reports of celebrity trials. For all these reasons, I didn't pay much attention to the Spector trials as they occurred. Since he had the best legal representation money could buy, I assumed he was guilty. But after seeing writer-director David Mamet's fictionalized reconstruction of his first trial, Phil Spector, and the documentary on which it was partially based, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, directed by Vikram Jayanti, I'm beginning to take seriously the possibility that he is actually innocent of the murder.

As you may know, actress Lana Clarkson was shot in the mouth with one of Spector's pistols while seated in his living room. After the fatal shot, Spector emerged from the room holding the gun and, according to his chauffeur, said, “I think I just killed someone.” At issue is whether Ms. Clarkson shot herself or whether Spector shot her.

I consider myself a member of the Sherlock Holmes school of criminal investigation. The physical evidence is by far the most important consideration. Eyewitness testimony can be biased or simply mistaken. Speculation about motives or states of mind is hopelessly subjective. Evidence of the defendant's past behavior is often irrelevant to the present case. What matters are the physical traces of behavior that can be preserved and analyzed. There are several problems with the case against Spector:

• First and foremost is the lack of blood on Spector's clothing. For Spector to have shot her, he must have been standing within two feet of her. When someone is shot in the mouth, a large volume of blood and brain tissue is expelled through the open mouth, totally saturating anything in its path. Yet Spector's white sport coat (and the rest of his clothing) is totally free of blood with the exception of what appear to be a couple of fingerprints, which could have occurred (by his account) after he picked up the gun. The prosecution seems to have had no convincing explanation for this lack of blood. It has been speculated that Ms. Clarkson was holding her hands in front of her face to ward off his attack, but if you place your hands in this defensive position, you'll see that there is plenty of opportunity for blood to escape around and between your hands and fingers.
  
  
• The angle of entry of the bullet is inconsistent with the prosecution case. The path of the bullet is slightly upward, which is consistent with the possibility that she shot herself. If Spector had been standing in front of her, as the prosecution claims, the path of the bullet would have been downward. I suppose he could have been kneeling, but no one is claiming that.
  
  
• The defense has offered a plausible explanation of the physical evidence which suggests that she shot herself by accident while she was drunk and fooling around with the gun. Spector claims that he entered the room, saw her with the gun in her mouth, and shouted something like, “What the hell are you doing? Stop!" According to Mamet, the defense tested several participants, having them hold a similar gun in their mouths and startling them using the same language. In the majority of cases, they pulled the trigger while removing the guns from their mouths. Removing a gun from your mouth is an awkward movement. Try it and you'll see how your finger could accidentally press against the trigger as you pull the gun away from your face.
  
  

• Spector claims that the chauffeur misunderstood him and that what he actually said was, “I think I'd better call someone.” The chauffeur was a Brazilian immigrant whose command of English was not that good. Admittedly, if he didn't shoot her, picking up the gun was a stupid thing for Spector to do, but it could be attributed to the shock of what (he claims) he just witnessed.

Mamet's argument is that most of the jurors ignored the physical evidence because they didn't like Spector, largely due pretrial publicity and his unusual appearance. Their dislike was exacerbated by the judge's controversial decision to allow five women to testify that Spector had previously threatened them with guns if they did not comply with his sexual advances. This was justified on the grounds that it established a pattern of behavior on Spector's part, but it is obviously weak evidence of his guilt in the Clarkson case. Mamet's screenplay also claims that his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, planned to have him tell his side of the story, rehearsed his testimony, but then changed her mind since his response to cross-examination was unpredictable. The documentary doesn't shed light on her legal strategy, since Spector was interviewed before the first trial.

The first trial ended in a hung jury. Two jurors held out for acquittal. This encouraged the prosecution to retry him. I'm not sure what happened during the second trial, but it seems likely that he had a less competent defense attorney. He was convicted and is serving a sentence of 19 years to life. In 19 years, he will be 88.

If you decide to watch one of these films, I actually recommend Mamet's account—on HBO this month—in spite of the fact that Al Pacino portrays Spector as more eccentric than he actually was, at least during Jayanti's interview. Here's a “Making of” feature.

The Jayanti documentary is primarily about his past life and contributions to popular music. It is available in full on You Tube.

Post Script

Does anyone remember the late, great Johnny Ace? He was a popular rhythm and blues singer who shot and killed himself on Christmas Day, 1954, while backstage at a theatre in Houston. Based on the testimony of witnesses, the most plausible explanation is that he was drunk and accidentally shot himself with a handgun he didn't realize was loaded.