New lawyer joins Spector defence team

Phil Spector’s murder trial is headed toward closing arguments next week with his former defence lawyer gone and a newly appointed man on the music producer’s legal team.

In a surprise development last night, a day after the trial’s final testimony, Spector’s wife announced that the producer had hired San Francisco lawyer Dennis Riordan to replace his ousted lead counsel, Bruce Cutler.

However, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler disputed the lead counsel title for Riordan when court resumed today for argument on how the jury would be instructed.

“I think that was a little bit of hyperbole,” Fidler said when asked by the prosecution if there was a new chief defence counsel.

“Mr Rosen is the chief counsel, the one we rely on as I understand it,” Fidler said of lawyer Roger Rosen, who effectively became leader of the defence while Cutler was often absent for several weeks to tape a TV judge show.

“Mr Riordan is here to work on jury instructions,” Fidler said. He said Riordan would be considered a member of the defence team while assisting with jury instructions.

Riordan, asked if that was his understanding, replied: “As far as I know, ’chief’ refers to a Native American. I am not chief counsel.”

Spector, 67, is charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra mansion on February 3, 2003, a few hours after she went home with him from her job as a nightclub hostess.

The defence maintains Clarkson, 40, was depressed and shot herself in the mouth.

Spector’s lawyers yesterday asked the judge to tell jurors they must find the record producer either guilty or not guilty of murder, with no option to convict him of lesser offences such as manslaughter.

“It is the prosecution’s position that Mr Spector was the shooter and that he therefore is guilty of an offence no less serious than that of second-degree murder,” said the defence motion. “It is the defence position that Mr Spector did not fire the shot and thus is guilty of no crime whatsoever.”

Prosecutors said they would file their response later today.

Fidler said final arguments would be presented next Wednesday and Thursday, with jury deliberations to begin the following Friday, September 7.