That sound Phil Spector is hearing is a wall of closing steel. And he'll continue to hear it for likely as long as he lives.
A California appeals court today upheld the tempermental music impresario's murder conviction for slaying B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in the foyer of his suburban L.A. estate eight years ago.
So much for a third trial.
A three-judge panel from the state's 2nd District Court of Appeal dismissed Team Spector's claim that jurors should not have heard testimony demonstrating his bad behavior and quick temper, especially when it came to booze, women and guns. Specifically, his attorneys sought to shut up the five women in the "Wall of Sound" producer's past who accused him of waving loaded guns at them in various incidents when he'd been drinking.
"The evidence showed that, when fueled by alcohol and faced with a lack or loss of control over a woman who was alone with him and in whom he had a romantic or sexual interest, Spector underwent a sharp mood swing, exhibited extreme anger and threatened the woman with a gun when she refused to do his bidding," read the 81-page opinion.
The judges also rejected the defense's contention that there was prosecutorial misconduct during the closing arguments of his trial.
That was the second time the 70-year-old Spector was tried which earned him a sentence of 19 years to life. The first trial ended in Sept. 2007 with the jury deadlocked at 10-2 in favor of his conviction.
The "Be My Baby" mastermind met Clarkson, who most famously starred in Roger Corman's Barbarian Queen, when she worked as a VIP hostess at Hollywood's House of Blues.