People v. Spector
| Decision Date | 17 August 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. B216425.,B216425. |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Phillip SPECTOR, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Riordan & Horgan, Dennis P. Riordan, Donald M. Horgan, San Francisco; and Charles Sevilla, San Diego, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Lawrence M. Daniels, Deputy Attorney General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
Defendant and appellant, Phillip Spector, appeals the judgment entered following his conviction, by jury trial, for second degree murder with firearm use enhancements (Pen.Code §§ 187, 12022.5, 12022. 53, subdivision (b)). He was sentenced to state prison for a term of 19 years to life.
The judgment is affirmed.
Phillip Spector was convicted murdering Lana Clarkson, a woman he met one night at the House of Blues nightclub in Los Angeles, where she was working. Clarkson accepted Spector's invitation to visit his home. They were driven there by Adriano De Souza, Spector's chauffeur. According to De Souza, Spector came out of the house two hours later with a revolver in his hand and said he had killed someone. The police subsequently found Clarkson's body slumped in a chair near the back door of Spector's house. There was a revolver on the floor underneath one of her legs. She had been shot once in the head and neck, the bullet having entered through her mouth. Spector and Clarkson were the only two people inside the house when Clarkson was shot.
The question at trial was whether Spector had committed implied malice murder by killing Clarkson in the course of assaulting her with the gun, or whether Clarkson had used the gun to shoot herself, either committing suicide or killing herself accidentally. Because Spector could not be convicted solely on the basis of his extra-judicial confession to De Souza, the prosecution sought to provide corroborating evidence in the form of crime scene forensics and “other crimes evidence” demonstrating his long history of violence toward women in similar situations. Spector did not testify. The defense put on forensic and mental state evidence trying to show Spector could not have fired the gun and that Clarkson had reasons to commit suicide.
A key question at trial was what the resulting forensic evidence would have been if Clarkson, rather than Spector, had fired the gun. In this regard, Spector contends the trial court erred by admitting into evidence a videotape in which the trial judge purportedly acted as a witness for the prosecution. We will hold, however, that this videotape merely shows the trial judge seeking to clarify a prosecution criminalist's ambiguous testimony.
Spector contends the trial court erred by admitting the “other crimes evidence” consisting of testimony from five women who, over a 20–year period, were the victims of armed assaults by Spector. We will conclude this evidence was properly admitted to prove Spector's motive for committing implied-malice murder and that Clarkson's death was not self-inflicted. We will conclude the trial court properly admitted “generic threat” evidence tending to show Spector's state of mind at the time of his fatal encounter with Clarkson, and that the jury was properly instructed on how to consider all of this evidence.
Finally, we will reject Spector's contention there was prosecutorial misconduct during closing argument and conclude the prosecution neither impugned the personal integrity of defense counsel, nor improperly attacked the credibility of the defense expert witnesses.
Defendant Spector was originally tried in 2007. That trial ended in a hung jury. Viewed in accordance with the usual rule of appellate review ( People v. Ochoa (1993) 6 Cal.4th 1199, 1206, 26 Cal.Rptr.2d 23, 864 P.2d 103), the evidence presented at Spector's 2008–2009 retrial established the following.
(1) Spector meets Clarkson at the House of Blues.
Adriano De Souza was working as a valet parking attendant at the Grill in the Alley (the Grill), a Beverly Hills restaurant. There he met Spector's chauffeur, who asked if De Souza wanted to work as Spector's backup driver. De Souza agreed because he could make between $30 and $40 an hour driving for Spector. By February 2003, De Souza had driven Spector between 12 and 15 times over the course of three or four months.
These backup driving jobs were arranged by Michelle Blaine, Spector's secretary, who would call De Souza a few hours before he was needed. De Souza would arrange for someone to cover his shift at the Grill and then drive his own car to Spector's house in Alhambra. After going through the main entrance gate, De Souza would drive to the back of the house, park, prepare Spector's car and wait for him to come out. Spector had two cars, a Rolls Royce and a brand new Mercedes. De Souza testified Spector would tell him where to drive and that he always understood Spector's directions. He and Spector communicated easily, although if Spector had been drinking he was sometimes hard to understand.
De Souza had been born in Brazil and he grew up there. He began studying English in school when he was 11 or 12 years old. In college he earned a B.A. degree in computer science. The instructional materials for his computer courses were in English. He had served for eight or nine years in the Brazilian military.
On Sunday afternoon, February 2, 2003, Blaine called and asked De Souza to drive for Spector that night. De Souza arrived at Spector's house in the early evening and prepared the Mercedes. Spector got into the car carrying a leather briefcase and told De Souza to drive to Studio City, where his friend Rommie Davis lived. Davis had gone to high school with Spector and then met him again years later at a high school reunion. During 2002, they occasionally went out to dinner together, but they were not romantically involved.
De Souza picked Davis up and then drove to the Grill. Spector and Davis went inside for dinner. Spector had one daiquiri and at least part of another during dinner. When he ordered the second daiquiri, Davis “suggested that it wasn't a good idea because he was acting silly.” Spector ignored her and continued to drink. He appeared to be a little drunk. They finished dinner between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. Davis wanted to get to bed early because she had to work the next day.
Kathy Sullivan was working at the Grill that night as a server. She first met Spector in 1997 and had socialized with him occasionally for a year or two, always in the company of her friend, Susan. Sullivan and Susan would visit Spector at his Alhambra house. Sullivan testified her relationship with Spector was entirely platonic and had never been romantic; she described Spector as acting “fatherly” toward her. She stopped visiting him when she lost touch with Susan in 1999. Then, after Susan came to work at the Grill, Sullivan would sometimes see Spector at the restaurant.
On Sunday night, February 2, 2003, Sullivan greeted Spector and Davis when they came into the Grill. After finishing her shift, Sullivan was eating when another restaurant employee came over and asked if she and her co-worker Karen wanted to join Spector for a drink. Karen declined, but Sullivan went over to Spector's table and then accepted his invitation to go to Trader Vic's. Spector and De Souza took Davis home and returned to the Grill to pick up Sullivan. De Souza and Sullivan knew each other because they both worked at the Grill.
At Trader Vic's, Spector and Sullivan went to the bar. Spector ordered and drank a Navy Grog and Sullivan had an Amaretto sour. Spector ordered a second Navy Grog, but may have taken no more than a sip of it. Then they returned to the Mercedes. Sullivan said she was tired, but Spector wanted company at Dan Tana's restaurant. Because Dan Tana's was located between Trader Vic's and Sullivan's apartment, Spector had De Souza drive Sullivan to her car. Sullivan dropped her car off at her Hollywood apartment and got back into the Mercedes.
De Souza arrived at Dan Tana's Restaurant about 12:30 a.m. There, Spector ordered a daiquiri and Sullivan ordered another Amaretto sour. They ate some food and ordered a second round of drinks. Spector then suggested going on to the House of Blues. Sullivan agreed, although she really wanted to go home.
At the House of Blues, Spector tried to get into the Foundation Room, a private VIP section of the club. Euphrates Lalondriz, who worked at the House of Blues doing security, testified he had been training Lana Clarkson to be a hostess and a security officer for the Foundation Room. Working security at the Foundation Room involved taking care of the VIP clientele and checking wristbands to make sure only properly authorized people were allowed in. Spector was a VIP client of the Foundation Room.
Clarkson stopped Spector and Sullivan from entering the Foundation Room because they weren't wearing the appropriate wrist bands. Spector said, “Do you know who I am?” Sophia Holguin, one of the cocktail waitresses, told Clarkson the man was Phil Spector, a music producer and a multimillionaire. She asked Clarkson to be sure to give Spector a seat in her section because he had previously left her a big tip. Clarkson seated Spector and Sullivan on a sofa in Holguin's section, and told them if they were going to order drinks they had to hurry because it was late.
Holguin took their orders. Spector ordered Bacardi 151, an expensive rum which had double the proof of regular rum. Spector tried to order a drink for Sullivan, but she just wanted water. According to Holguin, Spector seemed irritated and...
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