The Phil Spector murder trial has finally decided to lurch to a conclusion, and the prosecution yesterday got to wheel out its inevitably melodramatic closing statements yesterday – multimedia-style.
Although the last few months have seen the Phil Spector murder trial get bogged down with quarrels over minor scientific theories, the closing statements are the time where the horror of Lana Clarkson's death by a gunshot to the mouth get to be sensationalised as much as possible. And this was the case at the Phil Spector murder trial yesterday where lead prosecutor Alan Jackson basically whispered "Don't go, Lana, don't go" for a few hours. It's all needlessly overdone, of course – the way the Phil Spector murder trial has gone for Phil Spector so far, the prosecution's closing statement could have just consisted of a Russian dancing monkey pointing at Phil Spector and the jury would probably still find him guilty.
The closing statements in any criminal case are massively important to the verdict, and that goes triple for the Phil Spector murder trial – because the bloody thing's been going on for so long that we can't imagine the jury can even remember what their families look like, let alone any of the stuff that happened at the start of Phil Spector's trial. But we do, we remember it all, mostly because 98% of it consisted of women talking about all the times that Phil Spector put a gun to their head.
That's not all that the prosecution revealed during the Phil Spector murder trial, though – it also told the jury that Phil Spector hated women enough to want to shoot them all, that Phil Spector confessed the murder to his driver and that Lana Clarkson bought some shoes before she died. And, obviously a bunch of scientific nonsense that we could never hope to understand. Considering that Phil Spector's defence strategy revolved around saying how sad Lana Clarkson was and that Phil Spector uses his right hand sometimes, it's fair to say that the prosecution definitely has the upper hand so far.
And that was just reinforced during the prosecution's closing statement against Phil Spector yesterday. While pointing out that pointing a gun at someone probably means you don't mean well, and lambasting Phil Spector's 'chequebook' defence, lead prosecutor Alan Jackson then did the courtroom equivalent of turning down the lights, holding a torch under his face and telling a spooky ghost story, as the LA Times reports:
Jackson asked jurors to imagine the scene in the House of Blues parking lot between Clarkson and Spector. "You'd lean over and you'd whisper, 'Don't go. Don't go.' You'd simply say, 'Lana, don't go,'" Jackson said. "The reason that you would say that is because you know something she didn't know," he said. "You know in your heart of hearts he is responsible for her death. He killed her."
Alan Jackson's closing statement was so melodramatic, in fact, that Phil Spector's defence tried to call for a mistrial. Again. However, the judge wasn't having any of it, and today Phil Spector's defence will need to work overtime to convince the jury that Lana Clarkson killed herself in its closing statement – especially since its lead attorney has buggered off. Not only that, but topping the pained "Don't go, Lana" whispering is going to take a lot of beating – and somehow we don't think the judge will allow the defence to hire a Lana Clarkson impersonator to dress up as a ghost and be all like "Woooo! I did it! I bloody killed myself, woooo!" even though it's probably the only way people would ever actually believe that.
Read more:
Closing Arguments Begin In Spector Trial – Los Angeles Times
haaa-doou-ken says
ahh ha, im gonna be well depressed when the phil spector trial is over!
I think it’s probably the funniest thing ever.