Women to Testify in Spector Case

Dealing the defense a potentially serious blow, a Los Angeles judge ruled Monday that four women can testify that rock legend Phil Spector had threatened them with guns more than 15 years before he allegedly shot actress Lana Clarkson in the face at his Alhambra mansion.

Spector initially said the Feb. 3, 2003, shooting was an accident, but now contends that Clarkson killed herself. Prosecutors said the women’s testimony would show that Spector has a habit of waving guns at women who reject him.

The alleged incidents involving the four women appear similar to the current case, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler said.

In each case, Spector had been drinking and was interested in the women, but grew angry after they spurned him. He pointed a gun at them to prevent them from walking out on him, court documents show. The incidents allegedly occurred in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995. Two of the four women called police at the time, but both declined to press charges.

Such evidence, Fidler said, “can be used to show lack of accident or mistake” in Spector’s behavior on the night of Clarkson’s death.

Prosecutors contend that Spector shot Clarkson -- whom he met at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip earlier that night and had brought home -- because she too had tried to leave.

On Monday, Spector, 65, caused a mild stir as he strode through the criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles in high-heeled platform boots, his hair teased into a puffy blond Afro, with curls extending several inches beyond his head.

Before Fidler made his ruling, defense attorney Bruce Cutler disparaged the women as “sycophants and parasites” who hung around Spector when he was powerful and associated with him even after the alleged incidents. The lawyer also contended that the evidence would prejudice a jury.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Doug Sortino argued that the witnesses would show that Spector had a “common plan or scheme” involving women and guns.

Fidler rejected prosecutors’ request to introduce six other incidents into evidence. Some -- including two misdemeanor convictions on gun charges from the 1970s -- were too old, the judge said. Other incidents -- including one in which Spector allegedly put the barrel of a gun against a woman’s cheek at a party in Bel-Air in 1999 -- were too dissimilar to be relevant, he said. The party account was not “an incident involving Mr. Spector being alone with a woman,” Fidler said.

The law generally prohibits prosecutors from introducing evidence of prior bad acts at trial to show that a defendant had a propensity for committing a crime, legal experts say. But such evidence can be allowed to show a pattern of conduct.

If anything, Fidler “erred on the side of being conservative” in excluding some of the other incidents, said Jean Rosenbluth, a USC law professor and former federal prosecutor, who watched Monday’s hearing.

“It’s a huge win for the government,” Rosenbluth said.