Prosecution puts Spector’s expert on the defensive

Would Phil Spector wash his hands in the toilet?

Fierce arguments over that and other offbeat questions heated up the legendary record producer’s murder trial last week as Spector’s lawyers began presenting their case.

After two months of prosecution testimony that an enraged, drunken Spector shot Lana Clarkson, an actress whom he met that night at the House of Blues nightclub in West Hollywood, the defense, with its first witness, tried to show that such a killing was physically impossible.

The nearly 6-foot-tall Clarkson could have overpowered the diminutive Spector in a struggle over the gun, and blood evidence, e-mails exhibiting depression and the fact she was shot in the mouth point to suicide, defense expert Vincent DiMaio testified.

Clarkson, 40, was found dead in the foyer of Spector’s Alhambra mansion Feb. 3, 2003. DiMaio, one of the most prominent forensic pathology consultants in the nation, argued that Spector could not have fired the fatal shot because there was no blood on his hands or on the bathroom sink, where he would have washed.

Prosecutor Alan Jackson pointed out a rag soaked with Clarkson’s blood was next to the toilet. Couldn’t he have plunged his hands into the bowl ?

No way, DiMaio insisted. Humans are creatures of habit. Presumably, Spector’s habit was to wash his hands in the sink.

DiMaio was among the most important witnesses the defense will present. Since its opening statement, the defense has said science will clear Spector of the charge that he murdered Clarkson.

To make their case, Spector’s attorneys secured some of the biggest names in forensic science, including DiMaio, the retired chief medical examiner of Bexar County, Texas, and a sought-after expert in high-profile cases for both prosecutors and defense.

So far, any ground the defense gained through DiMaio has come at a high cost, observers said. Jackson succeeded in raising DiMaio’s ire, luring him into lengthy debates over matters like the toilet hand washing, or whether Clarkson could compete as an actress with Paris Hilton.

“Some of Jackson’s cross-examination bordered on being dangerously foolish,” said Loyola Law School professor Stanley Goldman, who was in the courtroom, “but it really worked. He got DiMaio’s goat.”

Robert Hirschhorn, a Dallas jury consultant who has worked with DiMaio on two cases and opposed him in six others, said, “I’ve never seen a lawyer get under his skin.”

But if DiMaio did not deliver the early score the defense had hoped for, it raises the stakes for their next star witness, Hirschhorn said.

“Henry Lee is going to have to be the clean-up hitter for the defense. If he does not rise to the occasion and hit a home run, it’s a big problem for defendant Spector,” Hirschhorn said.

The trial, in recess until July 9, is expected to last at least through the month. The defense plans to call Lee, perhaps the nation’s best-known forensic scientist, to testify that bloodstains on Spector’s jacket indicate he was standing too far from Clarkson to have held a gun in her mouth.

Lee’s testimony, however, will be clouded by an earlier ruling from Judge Larry Paul Fidler that Lee did not turn over a piece of evidence to prosecutors. Fidler said prosecutors can tell jurors about the finding to impeach Lee’s credibility.

Along with the hand washing dispute, DiMaio became ensnared in an argument over Clarkson’s prospects, at age 40, of making it big in Hollywood. When DiMaio cited e-mails about Clarkson’s sputtering career as evidence of depression, Jackson pounced on him for mentioning the actress’ age as a limit on her career. DiMaio took the bait, refusing to bend on his point that Clarkson faced a dim movie future.

“He presented himself as an expert in all things big and small, and possibly came across an expert in nothing,” Goldman said.

Jean Rosenbluth, a USC law professor who is following the trial, noted that when pressed in cross-examination, DiMaio said his assessment of Clarkson’s depression and alcohol use were not decisive in his conclusion that she shot herself.

“He looked really quite silly presenting this whole litany of stuff about her life, then the next day he says he didn’t consider any of that,” Rosenbluth said.

DiMaio’s value to the defense, she said, was in providing a plausible suicide scenario: that Clarkson, affected by her drinking and Vicodin use, acted impulsively. “I thought for the first time I had heard an explanation of a suicide theory that was plausible.... It offered the jury something to hang onto for reasonable doubt,” she said.

peter.hong@latimes.com