Spector Defense: Clarkson Was Depressed

It's not a ruling until the gavel bangs.

Dealing another blow to Phil Spector's defense team, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler barred the famed music producer's lawyers from introducing the majority of a semiautobiographical manuscript found on Lana Clarkson's computer after her death, despite giving off the impression last week that he was leaning toward letting the jury hear about it.

But after reading the rest of the memoir, titled The Story of My Life, over the weekend, Fidler ruled that it had "no probative value whatsoever," pointing out that Clarkson had not added to it for several years before her death.

Spector's camp is arguing that Clarkson was the victim of an "accidental suicide" in the early morning hours of Feb. 3, 2003, and that she was depressed and emotionally fragile at the time.

For the past week, defense attorney Christopher Plourd has been trying to undermine medical examiner Dr. Louis Pena's ruling that Clarkson's death was a homicide and that he had no reason to think she was particularly depressed or otherwise unstable.

Plourd & Co. had argued to Fidler that the manuscript indicated exactly the opposite.

"She has delusions," Plourd said last week, referring specifically to a point in Clarkson's account in which she writes about seeing a "shadowy figure" walk through her yard and calls it the ghost of an actress who shot herself in 1936. "She's seeing people who are deceased and talks to them," Plourd said.

Fidler, noting that this incident dated back to the 1980s, per Clarkson's writings, asked, "And this is important how?"

"The question was whether Dr. Pena could be cross-examined on this, and I find this to be so irrelevant that the answer is no," the judge said.

Plourd was allowed to introduce emails and letters Clarkson wrote to her friends that, according to Fidler's ruling last week, directly pertained to Pena's conclusions about the Barbarian Queen star's state of mind.

"I'm so tired of struggling to eat," Plourd read aloud from one of the emails.

"Do you think that's from someone who has a positive outlook on life?" he asked Pena, who was on the stand for the fourth day, having spent the majority of that time under cross-examination.

Pena, who admitted last week that he had not seen these documents, maintained that he didn't think such statements constituted a mental disorder.

"Absolutely not," the coroner said when asked whether reading these emails beforehand would have altered his ruling.

Another letter read, "You know me, Polly Positive. But [expletive] this year has been the worst. I began to question my talent."

Her medical records indicated that Clarkson suffered from debilitating migraines and a neurologist had authorized several pain medications for her, but in her later letters she mentioned that she was no longer taking the meds and had stopped drinking.

Clarkson also wrote about being hospitalized in 2001 after she broke both wrists, injuries that left her on disability for an extended period of time.

"Financially my life is a shambles," Clarkson wrote in an email dated about four months before her death, according to Plourd. "I'm on the verge of losing it all—just hanging on by a thread."

On redirect, however, Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson argued that these letters needed to be put in context.

"I really feel like I'm losing it. I’m kind of feeling like giving up the dream and therefore the struggle," he read aloud.

Jackson asked Pena whether that sounded like the statement of a suicidal person, to which the doctor replied yes.

But, Jackson said, Clarkson's outlook on life was on the up-and-up in the months closer to her death. In January 2003 she was cast in an infomercial, she had responded "Can't wait!" to a party invite for after Feb. 3, had just bought 10 pairs of shoes for work and was scheduled to be the master of ceremonies at a party for House of Blues employees on Feb. 4, the day after she died of a gunshot wound through her mouth in the hallway of Spector's Alhambra mansion.

Four days before her death, Jackson said, Clarkson wrote this to a friend about her job as a hostess at the House of Blues' Foundation Room: "I'm enjoying it. I'm also dealing with a bunch of drunk idiots but that comes with the territory."

"Do they sound suggestive of someone with a positive outlook of life?" Jackson asked.

"Yes," Pena replied.

Taking a slightly different route then, Plourd asked Pena, "People who accidentally kill themselves with firearms, do they have future plans?"

They do, Pena said.

Plourd also asked Pena if he was aware that Clarkson had told some of her friends that the House of Blues job was beneath her.

He hadn't heard that, Pena said.

Throughout, however, the L.A. medical examiner never wavered from his original conclusion.

"Are you satisfied that through the totality of the investigation that you've been involved in that the proper manner of death in this case is homicide and not suicide?" Jackson asked.

"Yes," Pena answered.

"Is it your opinion still that Lana Clarkson's death was a homicide?" the deputy D.A. asked.

"Yes, it is," Pena said. "The manner of death is homicide."

Tomorrow, prosecutors are expected to call Los Angeles sheriff's criminalist Bob Keil, who studied the alleged crime scene, and Los Angeles sheriff's Detective Mark Lillienfeld, the chief investigator at the scene. Also on tap either tomorrow or Wednesday is former L.A. sheriff's office investigator Stan White, who testified during a no-jury evidentiary hearing a few weeks ago that he saw defense expert Henry Lee pick up what looked like a piece of fingernail in the hallway of Spector's home.

Fidler ruled May 23 that Lee had picked up a white, flat object with "irregular edges" at the scene and failed to turn the item over to the prosecution.

Lee adamantly denied any wrongdoing, firing off a detailed letter to the Los Angeles Times last week in which he decried the "slanderous attack" on his reputation and threatened to take any legal action required to protect his good name.