For once, Los Angeles prosecutors didn't lose a high-profile celebrity murder trial. But they didn't win it, either.
A mistrial was declared Wednesday in the Phil Spector case with jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of conviction after 12 days of deliberations.
Almost immediately, the L.A. County District Attorney's Office vowed to retry Spector, the reclusive producer of Wall of Sound-styled 1960s hits such as "Be My Baby," "Unchained Melody" and "To Know Him Is to Love Him."
Spector's defense team was almost as quick—to register its gratitude.
"We thank the people of Los Angeles for keeping an open mind and the jury for their very hard work and willingness to share their thoughts with us," Spector attorney Linda Kenney Baden said, per a local wire service.
Spector, 67, showed no emotion as the mistrial was declared.
There was no word whether jurors were leaning toward convicting or acquitting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend in the 2003 shooting death of B-movie star Lana Clarkson.
Spector, who has been free on bail, was facing a second-degree murder rap. An Oct. 3 hearing has been set to determine the case's—and Spector's—future.
The nine-man, three-woman jury, whose ranks included a Dateline NBC producer, folded about 11:30 a.m., when its members buzzed Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler and slipped him a note informing him of their deadlock. Called to the courtroom after the day's lunch break, the jurors reiterated their impasse to Fidler in person.
Jurors expressed similar frustrations last week, when they were said to be split 7-5; then as now, there was no indication which way the majority was leaning.
Unlike last week, when Fidler gave the jurors new instructions in the hopes of uniting them behind a verdict, this time the judge called it a day.
"At this time, I will find that the jury is unable to arrive at a verdict and declare a mistrial in this matter," Fidler said.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson was seen whispering "I'm very, very sorry" to Clarkson's mother, Donna.
Clarkson, who was 40 at the time of her death, appeared in dozens of TV shows and movies but was best known to cult-movie fans as the star of the Roger Corman-produced Barbarian Queen films.
During the trial, prosecutors argued that a carousing Spector, whom they portrayed as a perennially armed threat to women, placed a gun inside Clarkson's mouth on Feb. 3, 2003, hours after the two met at the House of Blues nightclub on L.A.'s famed Sunset Strip, and pulled the trigger. The defense countered that Clarkson put the gun inside her own mouth and accidentally killed herself.
The prosecution's most powerful moments came from five women who each testified to having had a gun waved at them by an angry, sometimes drunken, Spector.
The defense, meanwhile, clung to the argument that the prosecution couldn't prove Spector's fingerprints were on the .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver that fired the fatal bullet into Clarkson.
The mistrial comes six months after the jury was selected and five months after the first witness took the stand, not including the years of delays before then. All told, 77 witnesses testified, and more than 500 exhibits were introduced into evidence.
Early on, the defense promised that science would prove Spector's innocence, arguing that the fundamentals of physics, biology and anatomy couldn't be argued. But they could.
The trial became a matter of Science vs. Science, as the prosecution's experts testified—sometimes for days at a time—that Clarkson's death was, without a doubt, a homicide; that based on what they knew of Clarkson's personality, her death wasn't either an accidental or an intentional suicide; that she died instantly when the bullet from the Colt Cobra shattered her spinal cord; and that her blood could have only splattered so far, meaning Spector must have been standing only two or three feet away from her to have amassed the blood droplets found on the white jacket he was wearing at the time.
Key prosecution witnesses included chauffeur Adriano De Souza, who had driven Spector and Clarkson from the House of Blues, where Clarkson worked as a VIP-area hostess, to Spector's home.
Echoing testimony he gave to a grand jury three years ago, De Souza stated on the stand that on Feb. 3, 2003, he was asleep in Spector's Mercedes, which was parked in back of the house, when he was awakened by a loud popping noise.
Moments later, according to De Souza, Spector, carrying a blood-smeared gun, exited his back door, approached the driver and said, "I think I killed somebody."
The defense tried to cast doubt on the Brazilian immigrant's English skills, and even tried to imply the District Attorney's Office was helping De Souza with his U.S. residency status, but the young man refused to budge on his memory of the evening.
The defense went on to argue that Clarkson, allegedly under the influence of alcohol and Vicodin that night and feeling despondent over the state of her acting career, finances and love life, accidentally shot herself.
Witness after witness opined that Clarkson's death was a suicide, that gunshot wounds through the mouth are rarely ever inflicted by another person and that the actress pulled the trigger herself.
Forensic pathologist Michael Baden, husband of the Spector defense attorney, testified, surprisingly, that he concluded that Clarkson may have lived for several moments after being shot and that she could have coughed blood on Spector with her dying breaths—meaning, even if he was closer than six feet away when those droplets landed, he didn't necessarily kill her.
In the trial's final days, Deputy District Attorneys Alan Jackson, who had been praised by legal analysts for his handling of the case, and Patrick Dixon accused Spector's camp of trotting prominent witnesses, such as pathologists Werner Spitz and Vincent DiMaio, whose testimony was influenced by the heft of the Wall of Sound creator's bank account. Word was some of Spector's trial experts earned as much as $5,000 a day.
One expert Spector didn't have by his side at trial was celebrity forensic scientist Henry Lee. The O.J. Simpson Dream Team member was disinclined to testify after he was accused of mishandling evidence, possibly a fingernail, at the crime scene.
Also notably absent, in a way, at the trial was Spector himself, who despite his sometimes-hair-raising hairstyles, stayed away from the spotlight of the witness stand.
Even before Wednesday's mistrial was declared, the week had been another eventful one in the eventful case. On Tuesday, authorities said they were looking into a message posted last weekend on a MySpace page noted as the Phil Spector Official Team Spector Page, a place for "TEAM SPECTOR FANS & SUPPORTERS UNITE!" The under-scrutiny message, credited to Chelle, who was I.D.'d with a photo of a young blond woman, said: "I love Phil Spector!! The evil judge should DIE!!'' .... xoxo Chelle."
Spector's defense denied that Spector's 27-year-old wife, Rachelle, ordered by Fidler last week to refrain from talking to the media, was responsible for the Chelle post.
Spector's future days in court, meanwhile, aren't limited to the pending retrial. Like O.J. Simpson before him, Spector is still facing a showdown with Clarkson's family in a civil wrongful-death case.