Lawyers for record producer Phil Spector cannot immediately use what they claim are diary-like writings of a suicidal vision taken from the computer of the woman Spector is accused of murdering, a judge ruled Monday.
The clearly peeved judge rejected the defense team’s attempt to use the material to cross-examine Dr. Louis Pena, the coroner who concluded actress Lana Clarkson’s Feb. 3, 2003, death at Spector’s mansion was a homicide. Pena disputed defense insinuations it was a suicide.
Spector’s lawyers described the manuscript from Clarkson’s computer as including accounts of her having visions of a dead actress who killed herself with a gun. Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler had indicated Friday that he likely would allow the material.
After reading the document during the weekend, he returned to court with a stern expression and said that what he found in the manuscript was so different than the defense characterizations that he checked to see if he had the right document.
He read aloud the passage about the dead actress, which showed Clarkson had found the account in a book about the history of Hollywood. And rather than visions, there was a description of seeing shadows pass a window.
“I don’t consider anything in this particular document to be significant,” Fidler concluded after allowing the defense to try to substantiate its claims.
Fidler said he would consider allowing the defense to introduce the material when it calls its own experts, but not to cross-examine the coroner.
Spector, 67, the producer who rose to fame with the hit-making “Wall of Sound” recording technique in the 1960s, is accused of murdering Clarkson, whose body was found slumped in a chair in the foyer of his mansion.
Clarkson, who was 40, had met him for the first time at her job as a hostess in a VIP room at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. She was best known for her role in Roger Corman’s 1985 cult film “Barbarian Queen.”