AN ACTRESS shot dead at Phil Spector's Los Angeles mansion was the last of several women victimised by the legendary music producer in a decades-long series of alcohol-fuelled confrontations, a prosecutor told jurors yesterday as his murder trial began.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson's opening statement made it clear the case against Spector will rely heavily on the evidence of other women dating to the 1970s.
Mr Jackson outlined what he called a pattern of behaviour in which Spector would become excee
dingly drunk, take a woman to one of his homes, refuse to let her leave and then threaten her with a gun when she refused to stay.
"The evidence is going to paint a picture of a man who on 3 February, 2003, put a loaded pistol in Lana Clarkson's mouth - inside her mouth - and shot her to death," Mr Jackson told the nine-man, three-woman jury. The prosecutor showed a photograph of Ms Clarkson slumped in a chair, her face covered with blood. "Lana Clarkson was the last of a long line of women victimised by Phillip Spector over the years," the prosecutor added.
Spector appeared tense during the televised proceeding.
Spector, 67, whose "Wall of Sound" transformed rock 'n' roll in the 1960s, lives in a castle-like mansion. It was there that he took Ms Clarkson, who ended up dead in the foyer.
Ms Clarkson, 40, best known for her role in the Roger Corman 1980s cult classic Barbarian Queen, had gone home with Spector from her job as a nightclub hostess. He met her only hours before she died.
A chauffeur who drove the pair to Spector's mansion has told of hearing a gunshot and seeing the producer emerge from the house holding a gun and saying, "I think I killed somebody." Spector later said he believed the shooting was an "accidental suicide" by Ms Clarkson.
But Mr Jackson told the court that Spector is someone "who, when he's confronted with the right circumstances, when he's confronted with the right situations, turns sinister and deadly".
The deputy district attorney said the jury will hear from four women, including a personal manager for Joan Rivers, a professional photographer of rock stars, a personal assistant who worked for Spector and a woman the producer had dated.
The issue of whether those women would be allowed to give evidence was a contentious one during pre-trial proceedings. The judge agreed to it but said it was "a slippery slope".
It took about eight months for authorities to charge Spector with murder. They are proceeding on a theory of "implied malice," alleging he did not intend to kill Ms Clarkson but caused her death by reckless behaviour and taking an extreme risk.
Both prosecutors and defence lawyers say forensic evidence and the post-mortem examination performed on Ms Clarkson support their version of events in Spector's home.
It is not clear if Spector, who has shunned the public eye for decades and described himself as battling internal "devils", will testify at the trial.
If convicted of second-degree murder, he could face 15 years to life in prison.
On Tuesday, the gender make-up of the jury provoked a last-minute legal dispute when prosecutors claimed the defence was systematically removing women through challenges.
A legal expert said it was not surprising the defence would seek to limit the number of women on the jury. "Women are more likely to identify with the victim in this case," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
"And it's not just the victim. It's the fact that the prosecution plans to put on other women as witnesses who claim they had problems with Spector."
A number of prospective jurors, male and female, were dismissed when they expressed strong views that Spector was guilty of murder.
The judge, Larry Paul Fidler, said prosecutors privately raised the question of gender in defence challenges last week but did not lodge a formal objection.
When a defence lawyer, Roger Rosen, asked to remove a woman from the alternate panel, the judge asked him to explain what facts other than gender made that woman and others unsuitable for the jury.
Mr Rosen recited factors for each woman removed, including domestic-violence experiences, losses of family members in killings or suicide and relationships with police officers who are friends or family.
Pat Dixon, a deputy district attorney said some of the men remaining on the jury had comparable issues but were not eliminated because of their gender.
The trial is expected to last for up to three months.
SUCCESS BUT NO HAPPINESS FOR A TROUBLED GENIUS
HE WAS once the first tycoon of teen, the pop music genius who legitimised rock 'n' roll by transforming its songs from primitive outlaw music to what he called "little symphonies for the kids".
Whatever the current trial's outcome, it will likely be the most sordid chapter in the life of a tortured American genius whose early musical success was overshadowed by years of eccentric behaviour.
"I've been called a genius and I think a genius is not there all the time and has borderline insanity," Spector said during a 2005 court deposition.
He was just 17 when he made his mark, writing and producing the hit song To Know Him is to Love Him. The title was taken from the gravestone of his father, who died by suicide when Spector was nine. By his mid-twenties he had nearly two dozen hit songs to his credit and had made stars of the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Teddy Bears and the Righteous Brothers.
His secret was the "Wall of Sound", a recording technique that filled a studio with instrumentalists and vocalists and, through the use of overdubbing, could transform a pop confection like Da Doo Ron Ron into something that sounded like a two- and-a-half-minute symphony.
