It's often been said that everyone has at least one book in them, and Stuart James' book might be the one that gets Phil Spector off his murder charge – because Stuart James' book is about the intricacies of gunshot head-wound blood spatter.
Thanks to his unputdownable pulp blockbuster book Scientific And Legal Applications Of Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation (currently at number 1,406,329 with a bullet in the Amazon book charts), Phil Spector has hired Stuart James as a centrepiece defence witness in his ongoing trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson in 2003. And surprise surprise, Stuart James has pointed out that the blood-spatter pattern at the crime scene seems to indicate that Phil Spector was too far away from Lana Clarkson to put a gun in her mouth and shoot her. Physically too far away, we mean. Mentally Phil Spector could have been anywhere – have you seen how that man dresses?
Forget all the he said, she said that's been going on in the Phil Spector murder trial so far. Forget that Phil Spector often pulled guns on women and that Lana Clarkson saw ghosts of dead actresses. Forget that Phil Spector thought all women were "fucking cunts" who deserved to be shot and that Lana Clarkson was depressed. Forget that Phil Spector apparently confessed the murder to his driver and that seeing Michael Bay made Lana Clarkson all sad. Especially forget that last bit. Because all that interests us in the Phil Spector murder trial is science.
You want DNA? Well, there was plenty of Phil Spector's DNA on Lana Clarkson's boob but none on the gun that killed her. You want bruises? Well, there were bruises on Lana Clarkson's tongue that may have come from Phil Spector jamming a gun into her mouth against her will or all the gas from the suicide-wound slamming her tongue around like a cherry-bomb. You want conclusive blood-spatter test results? Well, um…
It looks like nobody can make their minds up about what the blood-spatter pattern that came out of Lana Clarkson head actually means. If you're part of the prosecution against Phil Spector like Lynne Herold, the blood drops on Phil Spector's white coat mean that he was two feet away from Lana Clarkson when she died – easily close enough to be holding a gun into her mouth. But if you're part of Phil Spector's defence like Vincent DiMaio, the drops mean that Phil Spector was six feet away from Clarkson and couldn't have possibly shot her. And yesterday, to clear this mess up once and for all, blood-spatter king Stuart James took to the stand. MSNBC reports:
A forensic expert told jurors in Phil Spector’s murder trial Monday that the record producer didn’t have to be within arm’s length of Lana Clarkson to have gotten blood on his jacket when she suffered a fatal gunshot wound. Stuart James said blood spatter from a gunshot wound can travel as far as 6 feet… James, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., scientist who lectures around the world and has written a book on bloodstain pattern analysis, showed jurors photographs from his book including one depicting blood spatter produced by a high-velocity mechanism such as a gunshot. “At 6 feet you are still getting millimeter-size stains or less. Even small droplets can travel that distance,” he said.
The testimony of Stuart James is critical to Phil Spector's defence, which has seen setback after setback in recent weeks. But now it looks as if Phil Spector is finally getting some sure footing with this scientific evidence that theoretically he's slightly less likely to have shot a woman in spite of increasing circumstantial evidence against him. Maybe now we'll see a new, more confident Phil Spector in court – the old, shaky-handed Phil Spector replaced with a Phil Spector who rides into the courthouse on a unicorn, his metal hair glinting in the breeze.
Or maybe he'll keep dressing like a lesbian Golden Girl on a cruise. Only time will tell.
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Jess says
you’re just jealous because you’re not an amazingly brilliant scientist, you’re just some twerp who writes a blog.