Spector lawyer responds
Phil Spector’s defense said Wednesday that new allegations submitted by prosecutors -- that the music producer had threatened women -- were intended to prejudice the jury, which begins hearing his murder trial later this month.
“It’s highly inflammatory evidence, which seems to be intended to vilify Mr. Spector and cause the jury pool and others to treat him as a pariah,” defense lawyer Bradley Brunon said in a telephone interview.
“None of these reports, if they happen to be true, appear to pertain to anything that happened Feb. 3, 2003.”
Spector is charged with the fatal shooting that night of actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra mansion. Clarkson met Spector earlier that evening at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, where she worked as a hostess, and accompanied him and his driver home, saying she would stay for one drink.
On Tuesday, prosecutors filed court motions asking to submit new evidence that Spector had ranted at a Christmas party held by comic Joan Rivers in the 1990s that women “deserve to die. They all deserve a bullet in their ... head.”
One of Spector’s former assistants and romantic interests, Devra Robitaille, is prepared to testify that Spector twice put a gun to her head and refused to let her leave his home after parties in the 1970s and 1980s, prosecutors said. Brunon said the defense would oppose the motion.
Judge Larry Paul Fidler scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. He earlier ruled that four other women can testify that Spector threatened them with guns between 1988 and 1995.
On Wednesday, Brunon said it was “distressing to get these allegations so late in the proceedings.”
“It’s not an uncommon phenomenon -- in high-publicity cases or particularly in cases that are going to be televised -- for people seeking their moment in the spotlight to surface at the last moment,” Brunon said. Fidler had ruled earlier that the trial could be broadcast.
“The release of this information during the jury selection process can adversely affect the ability of a defendant to select an unbiased jury, even if the evidence is never offered in court,” Brunon said.
“People, including jurors, tend to accept the truth of material that appears in the media, even though it turns out to be completely false.”
The L.A. County district attorney’s office argued in its motions that the accounts of gun incidents should be offered to jurors to show Clarkson’s death fit “a recurring, common plan used by Spector to intimidate women into staying with him.”
