He hit me and it felt like a kiss

Yes, after a week went by, I knew. I grit my teeth; I cursed. I bayed at the moon. But I knew. And today, we found out for sure. The jury in the Phil Spector murder trial is at an impasse:

Jurors deadlocked in Phil Spector murder trial

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Jurors in the murder trial of legendary music producer Phil Spector said Tuesday they were deadlocked, raising the possibility of a mistrial after a five-month-long court-room battle.

In a dramatic development at a packed Los Angeles Superior Court, jurors mulling murder charges against Spector said that after four ballots they were split 7-5, with no prospect of a breakthrough.

"At this time we don't believe that anything else will change the positions of the jurors based on the facts of the case," the jury foreman told Judge Larry Paul Fidler on the seventh day of deliberations.

Fidler later dismissed the jury for the day. They will return on Wednesday at 10:00 am after three members of the nine-man three-woman panel requested further instructions.

One woman juror said she wanted clarification on the difference between "doubt" and "reasonable doubt," although Fidler said later he doubted further instruction would help.

In a surprise development, Fidler said jurors may be asked to consider convicting Spector on involuntary manslaughter charges. He had earlier ruled that jurors would only be able to consider a second degree murder charge.

Fidler also dismissed a defense motion for the case to be declared a mistrial.

Spector, 67, who pioneered the "Wall of Sound" recording technique during the 1960s and is regarded as one of the most influential figures in rock-pop music history, is accused of gunning down B-movie actress Lana Clarkson at his castle-like home in February 2003.

Prosecutors allege that the reclusive Spector shot Clarkson in the head as she attempted to leave his home after meeting him for the first time only a few hours before in the Hollywood nightclub where she worked.

District attorney Alan Jackson said during the trial Spector had a "rich history of violence" against women, often flying into drunken, gun-toting rages whenever they tried to leave his company.

No fewer than five women acquaintances of Spector testified that the genius behind 1960s hits such as "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" threatened them with guns in incidents dating back to the 1970s.

Spector's former chauffeur also provided damaging evidence, telling jurors that on the night of the shooting his employer had emerged from a doorway clutching a pistol in a bloodied hand to say: "I think I killed somebody."

Defense lawyers argued however that Clarkson, famous for her role in Roger Corman's 1985 cult classic "The Barbarian Queen" but whose career had stalled at the time of her death, killed herself.

Kim at The Darwin Exception asks:

Well, we were kind of expecting this at this point, weren’t we?

Yes, I suppose so, but I am nonetheless sick over it.

Kim continues:

The judge says that he has been reviewing case law, and despite both sides agreement that this is an all or nothing case, he has found case law to support the fact that the judge has a sua sponte responsibility to instruct on manslaughter. He gives the attorneys the specific case cite “People Vs. Lee” 20 Cal 4th 47,and says that if the attorneys can’t convince him that he doesn’t have this sua sponte responsibility, then he will re-open arguments and instruct the jury on this charge.

The Lee case is a case wherein a husband shot his wife, and forensic examination showed it was a contact wound to the head, but no one witnessed the shooting. This case held that brandishing the weapon was an included and lesser offense, and that the judge had a sua sponte responsibility to instruct on the lesser.

The judge says that he wants both sides to look at this case and argue to him why or why not the judge should have a responsibility to re-open the case for argument wherein each side will argue the manslaughter charge to the jury. Voluntary manslaughter is “in the heat of the moment” or “in the heat of passion:” - that doesn’t fit this case at all. Involuntary manslaughter is killing without intent or malice - which, while both sides agreed that this didn’t apply, the judge is now reconsidering. Involuntary Manslaughter in California carries anywhere from a 3 -6 year sentence, and then there is the gun enhancement in this case, which would be additional time.

And then we get to the heart of so many jury problems these days:

[Juror] #9 says that it would be nice to know the difference between reasonable doubt and just doubt.

I am tempted to say: it is the difference between being an idiot, or not.

Is it really true, then, that in America, justice can be bought? Or at least postponed.

Mood: glum.

I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still...

Left: Phil Spector and his attorney, Linda Kenney Baden. Photo from Reuters.

Some wit over on Darwin Exception quoted Robert Duvall in APOCALYPSE NOW: You know, some day this trial is gonna end.

Since Wednesday, I've been listening to streaming videos of the closing arguments because I started flipping out every time COURT TV cut to a commercial: Don't interrupt Alan Jackson! (((shrieks!)))

And that's how you know you're an addict: GIVE ME MY CLOSING ARGUMENTS, NOW!!!!! (roller-derby blocking-elbow to anyone who tries to take the remote from me)

I start shaking and getting weak when I don't get my closing arguments.

Anyway, here is our hero Alan Jackson, courtesy of the redoubtable Kim, at the aforementioned Darwin Exception; she wonderfully titled her post He had me at "Don't Go!":

"Five months ago, you didn’t know the real Phil Spector - but things have changed. Now that you know who he is and what he is and what he does, and his violent history with women and guns, now that you know all this, let’s go back, outside of this courtroom, let’s move out to the parking lot, the parking lot adjacent to the House of Blues, the one you’ve seen so many photographs of, this parking lot. It’s February 3, 2003, it’s late at night, actually it’s early in the morning, it’s dark out.. The lot’s beginning to empty. Go with me to that location, mentally take yourselves with me to that location. The lot’s not full, the valets are starting to clean up for the night. And you see over towards the side a big shiny black Mercedes, and as you look to your left standing in that parking lot, you see Philip Spector emerge from the House of Blues, he’s wearing all black except for a big white jacket, it’s oversized, a little too big for him, too big on the shoulders, too long, sleeves too baggy, and he steps out of the House of Blues accompanied by a tall beautiful blonde with blonde ringlets. She’s taller than he is and she’s wearing an above the knee slip dress, a black jacket and she has a leopard skin purse slung over her right shoulder. As you stand in that parking lot think about where you are and what you’re seeing. As you stand in the parking lot you begin to hear them talk and you overhear their conversation, you can hear as Phil Spector begins to insist that Lana Clarkson come back to his castle. He tries to coax her back to the location. And you listen as she constantly says “no, thank you, no, I can’t go, I’ve got to work tomorrow, no thank you, but I can’t join you Mr. Spector” And you listen as he continues to try to lure her back to his castle. Back to the Alhambra castle. “Come back to my castle and see my castle.” And then, just then, you think you hear in her voice a little crack - she may begin to relent, she may actually accept his offer. You’re standing in that parking lot and you’re watching this conversation. Let me ask you a question. If you could say but one thing to Lana Clarkson right then, standing at the back of that Mercedes, in that parking lot, just one thing, you can say but one thing to her, one sentence, one phrase, even two little words, even if you had to whisper it, what would you say? Had I asked you that question 5 months ago, when you first walked into this courtroom, you couldn’t answer it, you’d shrug, and you’d say “I don’t know what I’d say to her”. But now that you know the real Phil Spector, now that you know who he is, and what he is, and what he does, what would you say? Even if you had to whisper it so he couldn’t hear, all of you, all 17 of you are thinking the same thing, you’d lean over and you’d whisper “don’t go”. Don’t go. You’d simply say “Lana, Don’t Go.” And the reason every one in this jury box thought the same thing, maybe the words a little bit different, but the thought was the same. The reason that you would say that is because you know something she didn’t know. You know the real Phil Spector. And if you thought to yourself “I’d tell her not to go” it’s because you know in your heart of hearts, after hearing all of this evidence, you know in your heart of hearts, he’s responsible for her death. He killed her."

And with that powerful little scenario we begin closing arguments.

Frankly, I think Alan Jackson could have sat down after that little speech. He had them at “Don’t Go.” Or at least he had me. I swear to God I got cold chills up and down my spine and my eyes welled up with tears when Jackson leaned over the jury box, put his hands up against his mouth and whispered “Don’t Go” - even though I was shouting at him the same two words two sentences before he got there.

Sure, there was more powerful argument later - the big red “X’s” he squeakily put through each item in the chart of “10 Reasons Science will Prove Lana Was Holding The Gun” Linda Kenney Baden had outlined in her opening statement, the picture flashed on the ELMO of Phil Spector standing pointing his finger like a gun with the words imposed in red underneath “I Think I Killed Somebody” (which Jackson opined could have been more frankly spoken as “I think I FINALLY killed somebody”), and the slap in the face to the entire defense team when he ended with the montage from “Lana Unleashed” of the Steely Dan song “Peg” playing “So won’t you smile for the camera, you know I love you better….” as Lana in her different costumes, roles and skits from the reel flashed on the screen, all with her brilliant smile and bright sparkling eyes. “That” Jackson told the jurors, “That was the real Lana Clarkson”. As opposed to what Jackson called the “Defense of Desperation” we had seen for the last four months, and the second murder of Lana Clarkson.

Lana's mother cried during the closing arguments. :(

I will NOT be quoting Linda Kenney-Baden's defense closing on behalf of Phil Spector. You will have to go to misogynist, evil, pro-Phil blogs for that. Or you can check out Kim's account, always readable, accurate, detailed, and thoroughly fun.

And now, we wait, with fingers crossed.

You know, someday this trial's gonna end.

Oh, how I miss Kato Kaelin...

Left: Punkin Irene Elizabeth Laughlin, aka Punkin Pie, from The Darwin Exception.

The Phil Spector murder trial is winding down, and I am meditating on the value of friendship. What do we do with "friends" who come out of the woodwork, during these bizarre Hollywood trials? Where do these people come from????

I am fascinated by the demolition of Punkin Pie, Lana Clarkson's supposedly "best" friend (again, remind me not to make friends like this, okay?), yesterday on the witness stand, during rebuttal.

I once endured a three-hour cross-examination, and held up remarkably well (let's hear it for ST JUDE!) and for this reason, I sometimes cringe when I watch COURT TV. I know how it feels to be sneered at by a lawyer, while they add to your words: IN YOUR OPINION!!! IN YOUR OPINION!!!! And what flits through your mind is odds and ends and wise-ass replies that must be suppressed at all cost. For example, when the attorney kept saying IN YOUR OPINION, Cheech Marin's voice kept bubbling up in my consciousness, asking Do you see anybody else up here, dude??

I didn't say it out loud, but the fact that it was right there behind my palate, ready to come out, has become part of my retelling of events. I often wonder if witnesses are blurting things out, like my Cheech and Chong remark, or if they are remembering similar funny things. Sometimes, you can see that they are concentrating on self-restraint, and I'd love to know what they are really thinking.

But with Pie, well, you just stare in amazement.

For those unaware, Pie is a traitor to her friend, and testified for the defense in the Phil Spector trial. She says Lana was seriously bummed and depressed, highlighting Lana's supposedly dejected and very negative mental state in her testimony. This account therefore bolsters the defense's proposition, that Lana Clarkson went to Phil Spector's house to shoot herself with Phil Spector's gun (which she didn't even know was there). This explains, of course, why she put her purse over her shoulder, since we know everyone puts a purse over their shoulder and sits in a stranger's foyer to commit suicide. (((sarcasm)))

Will the jury buy it?

Well, maybe. They have a battery of mercenaries, oops, I mean "experts", extremely well-paid by Spector the billionaire. And then, there is Pie.

After yesterday, I dunno, though. It was a beauty to behold. On a great blog titled The Darwin Exception ("because it's not always survival of the fittest, sometimes the idiots get through") there is blow-by-blow trial coverage, and slices of Pie (you knew I could not resist that metaphor!) are served up piping hot:

[Defense attorney Roger] Rosen then asks the Pie about the Christmas letter. He quotes her the line that was read to the jury by Nili Hudson that says “My Lana, my best friend, my right hand and my inseparable sister, was violently and abruptly taken from me at the hands of Phil Spector.” Rosen asks Pie what she meant by this statement.

Pie then comes out with one of the most insensible, rambling, lamest ass excuses I’ve ever heard in my life - and I had three kids who were forever giving me lame ass excuses. None of them came close to this pile of shit - and this bitch is an adult who should fucking know better.

Pie says that she included this line because she has friends “all over the world from all different walks of life” and she was explaining to them why they hadn’t heard from her, or gotten their cards and letters that she was normally so good at sending. Which you know, would explain why she would say “Well, Lana, my best friend and my soul sister and my right hand and my inseparable sidekick - DIED or PASSED AWAY or KICKED THE BUCKET” - that doesn’t explain why she would include the editorialization of “At the hands of Phil Spector!” I mean, does it? Does that explain it? No - I don’t think so.

Then she tells us “I wanted to BROADLY explain why they hadn’t heard from me…:” BROADLY??? Who the fuck does this bitch think she’s fooling? Broadly would be “my friend died” - that’s broadly. NAMING THE PERP is not BROADLY.

I can’t even believe Rosen is believing this pile of shit. Even he has to realize this is NOT an explanation for what she said - it makes no fucking sense.

She continues (believe it or not), and says “The reason I put it that way was because I was trying not to describe it one way or another as to what happened - because no one knows what happened” (Ummmm….Pie, Phil Spector knows, now doesn’t he?), and some people would know about it and some had no idea. I was trying to be politically correct by not saying too much - I was trying to keep it simple.”

Which is completely and utterly diametrically opposed to what she put it in her Christmas letter - she wasn’t “simple”, she wasn’t “not describing it one way or another” she says Lana died at the hands of another - that’s not “not describing it one way or another.” I think that’s making a pretty clear fucking stand on what you think happened, right?

Who the fuck prepared this witness and agreed to let her get on the stand and say this shit? It makes her look like a fucking moron. And it’s insulting to the jury that she thinks this is a reasonable explanation. If *I* was her - I would have said something halfway fucking credible like “Oh, at this point I was still going through the stages of grief, and when I wrote this letter I was up to “blame” and I was blaming Phil Spector, and wrote this. Of course, as I moved through the stages I realized that this was just my grief speaking, and he wasn’t the only one I blamed during that period - I blamed myself, I blamed her mother, I blamed her other friends - it was just where I was at emotionally, at that time. I no longer blame him and realize that Lana had her own demons and that as hard as it is to accept, that she took her own life, and Mr. Spector had nothing to do with it. But that was then and this is now…”

Anything other than this incredible unbelievable poo she’s slinging from the stand. “Oh I said “Lana died at violently and abruptly at the hands of Phil Spector” - because I was just trying to keep it broad and vague out of respect for the family, because they were recipients of the letter, too. You know, not saying anything one way or the other, mind you. Just keeping it all ginger like and conscious of the family and our mutual friends.” What the fuck?

I swear to God, if any of my friends ever commits suicide, I’m going to send out a Christmas letter, and just out of respect for the family, and to keep it really BROAD and not inject my opinion into it anywhere, I’m just going to say in my letter “My friend was violently and abruptly taken from me at the hands of Tom Hanks.” I mean, you can’t really read anything into that, right - it doesn’t really MEAN anything, just that I’m being vague - since no one knows what happened.

She’s a fucking maroon if I’ve ever seen one.

Dixon gets up to cross examine and he points out that one of the dates in Pie’s date book says that Lana was with her on 1/17/2002 at the Cat Club - just three weeks after her injury to her wrists. He asks if Lana went out partying with that medical apparatus thing on her injuries - the “halo” appliance, and Pie seems to think “Sure! Not a problem”.

He also points out that Pie has no actual recollection of any of these events - can’t remember the venues or the dates or the events other than from reading her notes in her date book. She can’t remember where, exactly, the Bad Company concert was, for instance, just that it was “somewhere in Orange County”.

Dixon then asks when she sent out these Christmas letters, and how many people received them, and she says that she assumes they were sent sometime in December, but that sometimes she didn’t get around to it until January or even March, and that because of everything going on, she was late that year getting the letters out, but it was probably sometime around the New Year. She says that she sends them to like 100 of her closest friends.

Dixon then gets specifically to the last line of the letter, and says “OK - you described this as you being political correct?” Yes. “As not describing one way or another how you felt?” Yes. “as not giving an opinion?” Yes. “But you say that Lana was violently and abruptly taken from you at the hands of Phil Spector! Isn’t that a distinct opinion?”

“No, that was just my way of saying what the situation was.”

“But you could have said that she simply passed away - or even that she passed away at his house…:”

“Yeah, I could have…”:

“Yet you say that she was abruptly taken away at the hands of Phil Spector - that’s an opinion, isn’t it?”

“That was my way of describing the situation.”

“You denied seeing Rick Brody at Ann Marie’s wedding and telling him that you hoped that they would “fry the bastard” when talking about Phil Spector - you said that that was something you would never say, because you didn’t believe it, but isn’t that basically what you said here - that in your opinion, she died at the hands of Phil Spector - and isn’t that what you told to 100 of your closest friends and acquaintances in your Christmas letter?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Well, isn’t that what you believed in December of 2003, that your best friend died at the hands of Phil Spector?”

“No, I didn’t believe that.”

“And when you talked to Officer Tomlin, the day that she died, you said that she was never suicidal and never depressed you told him the truth, didn’t you?”

“Because someone told me to say that.”

“Well, who told you to say this in the letter?’

“I didn’t want to hurt people”.

“Who? Was Phil Spector on your mailing list?”

I laughed really hard at that, by the way.

Rosen gets up to redirect and really, he can’t do anything to make anything Pie says sound any more believable, because no one is buying the shit she is trying to sell. It’s just not a saleable product. And all the “Oh, you were trying to encompass the whole situation weren’t you?” “You were trying to be sensitive to the family, right?” that Rosen tries to polish the turd with just makes it sound all the more fucking stupid.

She is finally excused. But she isn’t excused from making me have to listen to her lame ass excuse. My kids really were coming up with better ones than that when they were 10.

Tee hee!

Well, it's nice to see her finally get it, but is it enough to convince the jury that she is not to be believed?

Stay tuned, sports fans!