HE WAS hungry. He was tired. He was frightened. His English was poor. The fountain was noisy. The words were slurred. The police were pushy. A Green Card beckoned.
A lawyer for Phil Spector offered jurors at the pop music producer’s murder retrial an array of reasons on Wednesday why they should discount the testimony of a Brazilian chauffeur who says Spector admitted shooting an actress six years ago.
Adriano DeSouza, one of the most important prosecution witnesses, testified that immediately after a gunshot rang out, Spector stepped out the back door of his mansion holding a gun in a bloodied hand and said: “I think I killed somebody.” In the second day of his closing argument, the defence lawyer said DeSouza misheard his boss’s words. The lawyer noted that the driver hadn’t slept in 22 hours or eaten in 10 hours and was shocked by the gunshot.
He said DeSouza’s ability to understand Spector was hindered by a loudly burbling fountain nearby and his limited grasp of English. “He is confused, as you would expect anyone to be in those circumstances,” Doron Weinberg argued.
He suggested that Spector most probably told the driver to get help for Lana Clarkson (40) who lay bleeding in the foyer behind him. “How do you know wasn’t ‘Call somebody’?” Weinberg asked jurors.
He said that investigators encouraged DeSouza into a version of the statement supporting their belief that Spector was guilty and that once “fastened” into that account he felt obligated to stick by it, especially because his future immigration status was up in the air. “I don’t mean intentionally lying. I mean trying to satisfy the authorities who he is depending on to stay in this country,” Mr Weinberg said.
Spector’s defence says Clarkson was depressed over career woes and financial setbacks, and shot herself. Weinberg read to jurors despondent-sounding passages from e-mails she sent two months before her death. “I am truly at the end of this whole deal. I am going to tidy my affairs and chuck it cuz it’s really all too much for one girl to bear anymore,” one said.
He said it was possible that after drinking and being intimate with Spector, Clarkson became upset and began asking herself: “Is this what my life has become?”
"In that moment, given all of the things that were wrong in her life . . . can you say she would not have been capable of committing a self-destructive act?" Weinberg asked. After a final summation by a prosecutor, jurors were due to begin weighing charges against Spector. A second-degree murder conviction would carry a minimum of 18 years in prison. His 2007 trial ended when jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favour of Spector's conviction. – ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)