UPDATE-12:22 PM
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We are watching the sentencing live on CNN.com. Phil Spector has been sentenced to 19 years to life in prision for the alleged murder of Lana Clarkson.
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Music legend Phillip Spector, who has been an inmate in the Los County jail since his April 13, 2009 conviction for the alleged second degree murder of Lana Clarkson, will be sentenced today.
The 15 years to life sentence is mandatory.
Trial judge Larry Fidler, who also reportedly queered a backroom deal with prosecutors and lawyers for fugitive movie producer Roman Polanski for his surrender in the United States on decades old sex charges by reportedly insisting that Polanski’s sentencing be televised, can tack as much as 10 years onto the sentence as an enhancement for Spector’s use of a firearm.
The sentencing will be televised, as was the first trial that ended after six months in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a verdict. Spector will be wearing one of his custom suits and not jail garb however.
If Fidler exceeds the four year enhancement requested by the prosecution and adds the full 10 years to the 15 year to life sentence for murder, barring a successful appeal Spector would be 87 years old before he was eligible for parole with no guarantee that he would be paroled at that point. A 15-to-life sentence for murder is indeterminate, meaning that the Parole Board will ultimately decide when and if Spector is released after becoming parole eligible.
Spector will not be speaking at the hearing today, but the mother of the alleged murder victim Lana Clarkson (who is suing Spector for wrongful death) will have plenty to say at the sentencing. Mrs. Clarkson is expected to read from a prepared victim impact statement.
Phil Spector’s publicist Hal Lifson told the Los Angeles times yesterday that Spector was "very disappointed" in the trial’s outcome, but was looking forward to having his case heard by a higher court.
"Everything is now being focused on a successful appeal”, Lifson told the LAT.
Spector’s legal defense team, which includes trial lawyer Doron Weinberg and appellate specialist Dennis Riordan, is so convinced that trial judge Larry Fidler has it in for their client that the defense did not even bother to file a motion for a new trial asking Fidler to set aside the verdict. Fidler has already denied a defense request that Spector remain on bail pending sentencing.
As discussed at length in this blog, Spector has some very compelling grounds for appeal, which is expected to focus on Fidler’s decision to allow the prosecution to introduce testimony from five women who all testified that Spector menaced them with guns, related instructional error by the trial court, and prosecutorial misconduct related to both prosecutors literally demonizing Spector based on that evidence—as well as arguing that the evidence showed Spector harbored the propensity to kill woman.
The decision by Fidler to admit the evidence from the five women as well as from a private cop working security for a private party (who testified that Spector told him a decade ago that all women deserved a bullet in the head) was controversial because the alleged gun incidents took pace many years ago (some 20 years ago), some of the women had drug and alcohol issues well as criminal convictions, and most of the woman sold their Spector “gun stories” to the tabloids before talking to police.
Only one woman contemporaneously reported her alleged incident with Spector to police, but also told police at the time that Spector “pistol whipped” her, yet according to the police officer who responded to her hotel suite that night she had no visible injuries or marks. Spector was not arrested that night.
The evidence from the five women also provided the theme for the prosecution closing arguments wherein Spector was continually referred to as a “demon”, a “maniac”, a murder waiting to happen, and a game of “Russian Roulette”—where the first five women were lucky enough to get the empty chamber, but Lana Clarkson got the bullet.
Under California law, in the rare instances where the alleged prior bad acts by a defendant share and the charged offense share a characteristics that are so similar they can be described as a “signature” and is therefore admissible on the limited issues of “identity” or lack of accident, the evidence must be so limited by the trial court, and the prosecution may not argue the evidence to show a propensity on the part of the defendant to commit the crime or that he is a person of bad character.
The Court of Appeal may agree with Spector’s defense team that epithets like “demon” and homicidal “maniac” fall into the latter category of impermissible character argument.
Once Spector is sentenced, he is expected to remain in custody for several months until the Court of Appeal can consider a motion that Spector be released on bail pending appeal.
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