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Blogging SpectorOur revels now are ended.

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

(Continued from page 5)

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On cross-examination, the prosecution asked whether she remembered telling a friend at a wedding, "We need to fry that bastard for killing Clarkson." She didn't. ("Pie has no memory," her friend Jennifer Hayes—another witness for the defense—later observed on the stand.) Punkin was also asked why she took her story to Spector's defense team. "I didn't know what 'prosecuting' and 'defense' meant," she replied.

Jody "Babydol" Gibson. Author of Secrets of A Hollywood Super Madam, "a book about my 13 years owning and operating an Escort Empire that serviced the sexual secrets of the rich and famous." Babydol claims that her client list included Bruce Willis and Tommy Lasorda; they both deny it. Babydol also claims that Lana Clarkson was one of her escorts from 1992 to 1998, and she's produced a page from her little black book to prove it. But prosecutors maintain that she was a very naughty Babydol and scribbled an "L" before and a "Cl" after the name of an escort named "Ana." These letters, they say, were written in different ink from the rest. Truth to tell, the entry (bottom right) does look a little suspicious. Judge Fidler has ruled that Babydol may not testify, though he's left open the possibility that he'll change his mind later. Babydol has also said that Clarkson "had an affinity for guns ... and kinky gun-sex play." On the other hand, Babydol wrote in her book that Clarkson was "murdered in the home of a wealthy record producer." Fidler ordered to her quit yapping about Clarkson to the press.

Three key witnesses for the defense. The first one seems to have implied that Spector killed Clarkson. The second is alleged to have stated that Spector killed Clarkson. The third one wrote in a book that Spector killed Clarkson. Obviously the defense didn't call them to the stand to share their opinions about how Clarkson died. Still, it's kind of striking.

The Wit and Wisdom of Phil Spector
June 26, 5:30 p.m. ET

The defense began making its case today with Dr. Vincent DiMaio, a ballistics expert who will argue that Lana Clarkson shot herself. DiMaio has been blocked by Judge Fidler from discussing a diary of Clarkson's in which she expressed despair over her acting career, Fidler having previously ruled the diary itself inadmissable. Both rulings strike me as needlessly restrictive, and this is coming from a guy who thinks Spector is pretty obviously guilty. I'm no lawyer, but it worries me that Fidler is tilting so obviously in favor of the prosecution that he's starting to help Spector's chances of overturning a conviction on appeal. Just one layman's opinion, but I do wish you'd control yourself, your honor.

Granted, Phil Spector is not an easy man to like. Even his defense team isn't bothering to deny that he's a foul-mouthed bully who frequently threatens people (especially women) with guns. If he were black, or if he lacked money to threaten potential accusers with lawsuits, I suspect this creepy pastime would have put him behind bars years ago. A characteristically piquant example of Spector's sparkling wit was posted today on the Smoking Gun Web site. Read silently while I read to you aloud from a postcard Spector sent a friend in April 2005: "[T]he L.A. District Attorney [is] braggin' about himself. Apparently nobody's told him that he's nothing more than a load of sperm that would have been better off swallowed by his Mother!" You perhaps begin to see why his lawyers are reluctant to put the "Da Doo Ron Ron" dean on the stand.

Phil Spector Rests. Bruce Cutler Rests. The Prosecution Rests.
June 25, 6:45 p.m. ET

How boring is the continuing drone of forensic experts arguing how far blood can spatter when somebody gets shot?

Please note that I'm not denying that the stakes of this debate are significant. If blood can spatter six to seven feet, that helps Phil Spector's defense. That's because Spector's lawyers are trying to explain how Lana Clarkson's blood could have spattered Spector's jacket if, as these same lawyers maintain, Spector was standing too far away to put the gun barrel into Clarkson's mouth. If, on the other hand, blood can spatter only two to four feet, that helps the prosecutors, because it would mean Spector was standing close enough to put the gun barrel into Clarkson's mouth.

Those of us who harbor the strong suspicion that the science of blood spatter is too inexact to settle this dispute find the expert arguments back and forth, which have been dominating the Spector trial for the past week, a waste of everybody's time. (A much more interesting question, though one not germane to the murder charge, is why Spector purchased said jacket from the ladies' department. Apparently the buttons are on the left, not the right. That probably explains why Clarkson initially mistook Spector for a woman when they first met at the House of Blues.)

Even those who do not find the science of blood spatter too inexact to settle this question (or who at least pretend not to) seem to find the back and forth a bit trying. Court TV's Spector blog caught the defendant himself nodding off "intermittently." (Spector also fell asleep on June 13 during expert testimony about fingerprints.) Another interested party who apparently has lost his patience is Bruce Cutler, the flamboyant former attorney to John Gotti (he won three acquittals for the Teflon Don), who at the start of the trial was Spector's lead attorney. Cutler hasn't played a terribly visible role at Spector's trial ever since Judge Fidler admonished him ("You will not point and yell in my courtroom!") while he was cross-examining Dianne Ogden-Halder, one of the four women who testified about being threatened by Spector with a gun. (There were actually more than four. Joan Rivers testified before the grand jury that at one of her Christmas parties Spector pulled a gun on Walter Cronkite's daughter. To paraphrase Cronkite's famous on-air remark about heavy-handed law enforcement at the 1968 Democratic convention, I think we've got a thug here, if I may be permitted to say so.)

But I digress. The point is that since Cutler pointed and yelled in Judge Fidler's courtroom, we haven't seen much of Cutler, and Cutler himself eventually told Peter Y. Hong of the Los Angeles Times, "I have been muzzled," presumably by Mr. Wall of Sound himself. Now Cutler is absent from the courtroom altogether, and according to Court TV he's telling people he won't be back for a month. The Los Angeles Times is more cautious, saying Cutler has said—apparently to the Times—that he'll be gone a week or more.

Judge Fidler today announced that the only prosecution witness left to call is Sara Caplan, a former member of Spector's defense team who has refused to repeat before the jury her testimony before Fidler that not long after Clarkson's death she saw Spector's celebrity expert witness, Dr. Henry Lee, pick up a white object about the size of a fingernail off Spector's floor. This object was never handed over to the court as evidence, as the law requires. Caplan's allegation persuaded Fidler to rule that Lee had hidden evidence detrimental to Spector's defense. (The prosecution maintains the white object was a fake acrylic fingernail of Clarkson's that's gone missing.) After Caplan refused to testify before the jury, Fidler held her in contempt. An appeals court refused to overturn Fidler's hearing, and now Fidler has issued a stay pending Caplan's appeal to the California Supreme Court. (Ironically, Fidler did not hold Lee, the alleged wrongdoer here, in contempt, because Fidler can't actually prove that Lee did what Caplan said he did.)

Assuming the California Supreme Court doesn't rule on Caplan's appeal right away, the defense will start presenting its case on June 26. Apparently it will do so without its resident Mafia lawyer. We will, at long last, find out what Bruce Cutler meant in his opening statement when he suggested a two-gun theory positing that Clarkson died because she confused one gun that didn't have bullets in it with another, similar-looking gun that did. But apparently we won't find this out from Cutler. Perhaps he is absenting himself not because he's been banished by Spector, but rather because he doesn't know how to make this argument with a straight face.

While You Were Out
June 15, 2007, 4:15 p.m. ET

One of the advantages of following a trial over the Internet (as opposed to sitting in the courtroom) is the relative ease with which you can drift away when the action starts to flag. It's been more than two weeks since I last filed a dispatch on Phil Spector's murder trial, and you're probably wondering whether you missed anything important. Answer: not really.

Mostly it's been a parade of experts testifying about what we can deduce from the forensic evidence. Very little, it turns out. Especially compared to what we can deduce from four women who testified that Phil Spector pointed a gun at them under circumstances strikingly similar to Lana Clarkson's; from Spector's chauffeur saying that Spector told him, "I think I killed somebody"; and from Spector's failure to call 911 after the gun went off. Expert testimony about the gun (no fingerprints), the autopsy (disgusting yet tedious), and blood spatter (the prosecution's expert says it didn't travel far) was so boring that Spector himself was observed nodding off.

The only big news occurred when the jury wasn't present, and consisted of ongoing fallout from Judge Fidler's earlier ruling that Spector's celebrity forensic expert, Dr. Henry Lee, hid a small white object that may have been Lana Clarkson's missing acrylic fingernail when he visited the scene of Clarkson's death. Outraged by Fidler's ruling (and also by Fidler's refusal to allow testimony from Jody "Babydol" Gibson, who hints in her book, Secrets of a Hollywood Super Madam, that Clarkson worked for her as a prostitute under the why-bother alias "Alana"), Spector's defense team moved for a mistrial, which Fidler, unsurprisingly, denied. The Fingernail Wars next claimed an unlikely victim: Sara Caplan, a former member of Spector's defense team, who earlier testified in a hearing before Fidler that she saw Lee pick up a white object about the size of a fingernail. (Caplan's testimony was the primary basis for Fidler's ruling against Lee.) When the prosecution called Caplan to the stand, Caplan refused, citing attorney-client privilege. Fidler then ruled Caplan in contempt, a move that Caplan called "despicable." Fidler stayed his ruling pending appeal, but if Caplan loses her appeal she will go to jail.

The whole ruckus confuses me no end. If Caplan wants to protect Spector, why did she agree to testify in the earlier hearing when jury members were absent? Assuming Spector had nothing to do with Lee's alleged hiding of evidence, how would Caplan's testimony discredit Spector? On the other hand, if Caplan knows Spector did play a role in hiding evidence, isn't she required to report that to the court, regardless of attorney-client privilege? Given that the defense has not yet called Lee to the stand (and, given Fidler's ruling, probably never will), why is the prosecution maneuvering to discredit Lee?

So many questions. What the hell is this, The Sopranos?