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Blogging SpectorOur revels now are ended.

By Timothy Noah
Updated Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007, at 6:17 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Can This Jury Be Headed For Acquittal?
Sept. 14, 2007, 3:50 p.m. ET

It's day five for jury deliberations in the Spector trial, and both Court TV and the Los Angeles Times report that the jurors dressed sloppy today (blue jeans, golf shirt, T-shirt, etc.; the jury foreman is tieless). According to Court TV and the L.A. Times, this probably means the jurors don't anticipate delivering a verdict before the weekend. (Apparently jurors tend to dress formally for a verdict, even in Los Angeles.)

What the hell is taking them so long?

Obviously the jury doesn't see this case as a slam dunk. In all likelihood they are combing through the forensic evidence, which strikes me as pseudoscientific and not really worth much consideration. The trajectory of Lana Clarkson's blood droplets, real or imagined, is not going to tell us whether Phil Spector killed her. The facts that Spector told his chauffeur he killed her immediately after the shots were fired; that Spector did not call 911 after the shooting; that Spector repeatedly had waved guns in women's faces in the past, and even caressed Diane Ogden-Halder's cheek, face, and neck with a gun barrel ("He said he was going to blow my brains out," she deadpanned in her trial testimony. "That wasn't romantic to me."); these easily grasped items in evidence are what tell me, anyway, that Spector killed Clarkson.

So, what's taking them so long? Obviously somebody isn't convinced. We can no longer rule out the awful possibility that this case is headed for acquittal.

How To Make Sure You Don't Miss the Verdict
Sept. 12, 2007, 12:55 p.m. ET

Court TV's Web site, which has covered the Spector trial better than the Los Angeles Times or KTLA, says that if you sign up for its newsletter (click the first box) it will send you an e-mail when it learns that the Spector verdict is about to be read. The come-on promises to get the news to you in time for you to log on to your computer and "watch it live." I recommend signing up only to those who are seriously warped by their addiction to this case, because in all likelihood Court TV will subsequently fill your inbox with newsletters about all sorts of crap you don't care about. The procedure to unsubscribe seems simple, but you never know. You have to write in a reason. I recommend, "For me there is only the Spector trial."

Jonathan Turley's Weird Brief For Expert Witnesses
Sept. 11, 2007, 4:10 p.m. ET

While we await completion of jury deliberations, let's take a moment to puzzle over Jonathan Turley's bizarre op-ed in the Sept. 11 Los Angeles Times, which takes violent exception to Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson's assertion in closing arguments that "if you hire enough lawyers who hire enough experts who are paid enough money, you can get them to say anything." (Turley leaves out Jackson's excellent next sentence: "You pay someone enough money you can get him to wear a tutu in court.") This, Turley sputters, is "a highly unprofessional argument that encouraged jurors to dismiss the opinions of any experts who appear on behalf of wealthy defendants as, in effect, purchased testimony."

Well … yeah. Expert testimony does not come free, and while I'm no lawyer, the simple fact that one side or another in a judicial proceeding is permitted to pay certain witnesses for their expertise has always struck me as an invitation to corruption. (If you subscribe to Harper's, clicking here will take you to a short article on this theme, titled "Opinions For Sale," that I published in that magazine a quarter-century ago.)

Turley goes on to say that sure, prosecutors were right to ding Spector attorney Linda Kenney Baden for her "breathtakingly bad judgment" in calling her own husband to the witness stand as a paid expert. Turley neglects to mention that yet another of Spector's expert witnesses—famous forensic pathologist Dr. Henry Lee—never took the stand at all because the judge ruled that he had withheld evidence. (See "For Want Of A Nail," May 11, and "Judge Fidler Disses Henry Lee," May 23.)

Sure, Turley further concedes, there have been a few scandals—OK, a lot of scandals—that arose from the hiring of expert witnesses. Turley cites, among others, the ignominious career of James "Dr. Death" Grigson, who routinely ruled defendants mentally fit so they could get the chair. (Grigson, whom I cited in my Harper's piece 25 years ago, is now worm food himself). But, but, but, Turley goes on … these scoundrels (which is to say, the scoundrels Turley chooses to mention) were all prosecution witnesses. "Indeed, in a study of 200 exoneration cases involving DNA (including death row cases), more than 25 percent involved flawed forensic testimony from prosecution witnesses."

Duh. If you were looking to discover why a bunch of innocent people were wrongly found guilty, it stands to reason that you'd end up finding fault with a lot of expert prosecution witnesses (as opposed to expert defense witnesses). That hardly constitutes evidence that expert defense witnesses warrant little skepticism, especially when the defendant is rich enough to pay them handsomely, as Spector is.

But, Turley intones, "It is the weight of the evidence, not the wealth of the defendant, that should be the sole consideration of a jury." Oh, please. If an expert's testimony sounds fishy, it's perfectly legitimate to take into account which side paid him. If it weren't, the judge would never let the jury find out that these witnesses were paid in the first place.

Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, is a bit of a press hound—he managed to work into his faculty bio that he "ranked 38th in the top 100 most cited 'public intellectuals' in a recent study [Web link mine] by Judge Richard Posner," who also designated him "the second most cited law professor"—and I suspect that in this instance the energetic fellow let his typing fingers outrace his brain. This is an occupational hazard for op-ed jocks. The third-most-cited law professor might have found time to read over this article, ball it up, and toss it into the nearest wastebasket.

Mrs. Spector Gets Fresh With the Judge
Sept. 10, 2007, 2:50 p.m. ET

Who, America wondered throughout the Spector trial, would be crazy enough to marry Phil Spector on the eve of his trial for murder? This is a man known to have waved loaded guns in the faces of many, many women. This is a man now accused of firing one such gun into the mouth of Lana Clarkson.

Who would plight her troth to such a man?

We got our answer today.

The woman crazy enough to marry Phil Spector after Clarkson's dead body turned up in his foyer is the same woman who is crazy enough to talk back to Judge Fidler as he slaps her with a gag order for contacting members of the press after he expressly told her not to. To catch 27-year-old Rachelle Short Spector's reckless backtalk to Judge Fidler, click here. To view the Court TV interview that landed Rachelle in hot water, click here. To read Rachelle's emphatic denial that she is an actress/model, click here.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Photograph of Phil Spector by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.
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