People v. Spector

[1342]Opinion

KLEIN, P. J. Defendant and appellant, Phillip Spector, appeals the judgment entered following his conviction, by jury trial, for second degree murder with firearm use enhancements (Pen. Code, §§ 187, 12022.5, 12022.53, subd. (b)). He was sentenced to state prison for a term of 19 years to life.

The judgment is affirmed.

INTRODUCTION

Phillip Spector was convicted of murdering Lana Clarkson, a woman he met one night at the House of Blues nightclub in Los Angeles, where she was working. Clarkson accepted Spector’s invitation to visit his home. They were driven there by Adriano De Souza, Spector’s chauffeur. According to De Souza, Spector came out of the house two hours later with a revolver in his hand and said he had killed someone. The police subsequently found Clarkson’s body slumped in a chair near the back door of Spector’s house. There was a revolver on the floor underneath one of her legs. She had been shot once in the head and neck, the bullet having entered through her mouth. Spector and Clarkson were the only two people inside the house when Clarkson was shot.

The question at trial was whether Spector had committed implied malice murder by killing Clarkson in the course of assaulting her with the gun, or whether Clarkson had used the gun to shoot herself, either committing suicide or killing herself accidentally. Because Spector could not be convicted solely on the basis of his extrajudicial confession to De Souza, the prosecution sought to provide corroborating evidence in the form of crime scene forensics and “other crimes evidence” demonstrating his long history of violence toward women in similar situations. Spector did not testify. The defense put on forensic and mental state evidence' trying to show Spector could not have fired the gun and that Clarkson had reasons to commit suicide.

A key question at trial was what the resulting forensic evidence would have been if Clarkson, rather than Spector, had fired the gun. In this regard, Spector contends the trial court erred by admitting into evidence a videotape in which the trial judge purportedly acted as a witness for the prosecution. We will hold, however, that this videotape merely shows the trial judge seeking to clarify a prosecution criminalist’s ambiguous testimony.