Spector Jury Briefly Back to Work

He has reason to doubt that this will work, but Judge Larry Paul Fidler is doing his darndest to squeeze a verdict out of the Phil Spector jury.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jurist offered revised instructions Thursday to the nine men and three women who were previously deadlocked, 7-5, as to whether Spector is guilty of second-degree murder. Fidler gave the panel its marching orders a day after ruling jurors could not consider a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of Lana Clarkson.

After Fidler had clarified his previous directions, taking into consideration the questions jurors had this week about the nature of reasonable doubt and what exactly Spector needed to have done to merit a conviction, the jury resumed deliberations Thursday afternoon.

They debated for a little over an hour and left for the day. The jury informed the court Tuesday that they were at an impasse after a little more than 28 hours of discussion stretched over seven days.

On Wednesday jurors expressed confusion over Special Instruction No. 3, provided by the defense, which stated that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Spector pointed a gun at Clarkson and the gun ended up inside her mouth while in the music producer's hand.

"If you do not find that the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed that act, you must return a verdict of not guilty," the instruction states.

After learning that at least five jurors were befuddled by that directive, Fidler concluded that he had made an "absolute error" by using it and said he would withdraw the instruction from the list of guidelines.

Defense attorney Dennis Riordan told Fidler Thursday that he was willing to scrap that instruction in exchange for one that said the prosecution must prove Spector directly caused Clarkson's death.

Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson protested the use of the word "directly," arguing that it put even more of a burden on his case, which was to prove that Spector acted with reckless disregard for a human life, or "malice aforethought," as Fidler explained today.

Instead, Fidler told the jury that, in order to convict, they must conclude that Spector "committed an act with a firearm that caused the death of Lana Clarkson, such as placing a gun in her mouth or forcing her to place the gun in her mouth at which time it discharged, pointing the gun at or against her head at which time it entered her mouth and discharged," or "pointing the gun at her to prevent her from leaving the house, causing a struggle which resulted the gun entering her mouth and discharging."  

"By using these examples I am not suggesting that any of these acts took place," Fidler said. "These are inferences you may draw from the evidences but are not required to do so. You may reject them. These are only possibilities that you may consider.

Withdrawing the original instruction completely, however, could give the jury the idea that there are more ways to convict Spector on the murder charge than they had previously considered.

Defense attorney Bradley Brunon argued that presenting all of these options to prove murder without also including various hypotheticals to prove the defense's position was unfair.

Fidler reminded him that he had given the defense to deliver another closing statement.

"You can't retry the case after a week of deliberations," Brunon responded. "There really is no viable alternative other than to mistry it and do it right the next time. There's no way out of it."

But a conviction after all this legal wrangling could provide a wide berth for appeal, as well.

If the deadlock persists and a mistrial is declared, the prosecution has the option of retrying Spector, offering him a plea bargain or dropping the case.