Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

As nutty as some jurys have been, I gotta go with Mark on this one. Over time, professional juries would be politicized and corrupted.

On the other hand, professional juror would be a great job. SOme people try to get out of jury duty and I can understand that if you are too busy doing other things. But if you have the time, I HIGHLY recommend jury duty. Its very interesting. Just be sure to bring a good book for the down times.

As Anthony Quinn says to James Coburn in 'A High Wind in Jamaica' : "Zac, you must be guilty of something." Which of course was true. They weren't guilty of the crime they were about to be hung for, but they were lowlife pirates and were guilty of all sorts of bad stuff.

And that line is echoed by Bob Dylan in "Tight Connection To My Heart":
....I must be guilty of something
....You just whisper it into my ear

oops, double post.

In that case, let's convict Phil on that silly mixdown of Let It Be.

yup, you got that right.

Hey Phil, payback is a *****, eh?

So was playback, in 1970.

It's gone another full day, or a week and a day now.

Considering the only witness at the scene said Phil emerged from the house with bloody hands, the gun, and said "I think I killed her," the defense has to be happy at this point. At least one fool is buying this is more complicated than it was.

Well, it went five months and some juror is buying the defense's silly stories:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/18/spector.jury/index.html

they were split 7-5 so its not just one person.

If a mistrial is called you can be sure he'll be re-tried.

And guess what they're hung about? Lana Clarkson was talking about feeling suicidal. Defense says she grabbed the gun that he was pointing at her for the umpteenth time and wasted herself. Spector subsequently rants about how she had no right to do that, and I think I killed someone, he freaks out and moves the gun, etc. It's that old reasonable doubt thing...

I still say the longer a trial goes, the better off the defense is. If you can argue anything for five months over five weeks, it serves the defense. The prosecution can only go over him saying "I think I killer her" so many times.

It's only arguing one thing happened. He did it, and he did it a certain way, whereas if given nearly half a year the defense can go on endlessly about what might have happened, and what could have happened, many more possibilities there. If you've got judge Ito, you can just keep going. So you win, or at least you don't lose.

After 9 weeks (remember, a murder trial like this isn't all that complicated. These people hardly knew each other, or didn't know each other at all) the jury is lucky if they remember their kid's names at that point.

So if they try him again, it'll be months or years before it comes to court, then another half a year. Meanwhile, Phil's free.

I bet this has gone longer than the Manson family trial, with seven victims and multiple people charged.

This judge should be disbarred by leading the jury like this, let them make up their own mind. This judge is a hypocritical a##hole.

The jurors reached an impasse in the case earlier this week and some requested further instructions, leading Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler to suggest new theories of how Spector might have committed the crime.

The producer is accused of murdering actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra, California mansion in February 2003. She died of a gunshot wound through the mouth.

The defense is claiming she shot herself, while the judge suggested that Spector could have forced Lana Clarkson to put the gun in her mouth where it then went off.

The judge had not allowed for hypothetical scenarios such as this during the trial, but he justified his recent theories by saying: "It's a reasonable inference that can be drawn."

So what was Lana Clarkson, or any other aspiring actress, doing at the mansion of such an obviously odious, gun-toting toad? I mean, is there some kind of drug routinely available in Hollywood that produces this kind of completely illogical, insane and dangerous behavior?

Oh, wait...yes there is.

Supposedly, the judge found some sort of rare but legal precedent for what's going on there now, a prior case.

But I'm sticking to what I said earlier. With the possible exception of an eyewitness, there couldn't be more evidence that Spector just straight up murdered this woman, just killed her to kill her (something that doesn't surprise a lot of people who know him.)

If it was a suicide, then why didn't he call for an ambulance? Why did he tell his driver "I think I killed somebody." Why did he wipe off the gun, put it under the body's leg, change clothes and not cooperate with the police at the scene? (They had to tackle him.) And why, when they arrested him, didn't he say she shot herself?

But you can hire a bunch of for money "experts" and you drag it out long enough, 5 or 7 flakey jurists will go for it every time. The Devil himself could get a hung jury at the very least. Had this defense team been able to drag it out for another 7 months, like OJ's did, Phil would walk.

Unfortunately the victim didn't know much about Spector. Now she's dead, for years and he's been free.

This is another Southern California sideshow like OJ's trial was. Where defense lawyers can drag a trial like this on and convince a jury of just about anything. At least in the Manson trial the prosecution had a brilliant man in Vincent Bugliosi who didn't let the jury get sidetracked by a 9 month trial and Manson's crazy antics. To my knowledge, Bugliosi retired from the California DA's office having never lost a trial.

The Manson murders were the opposite of OJ and Phil. If anything, the celebrities in that one were killed, and the killers were not yet known to anyone.

And the family didn't have money for big time defense.