Phil Spector had been one of the most influential men in American popular music for more than forty years when Lana Clarkson died in Alhambra, California, in the early hours of February 3, 2003. He had built the dense, echoing production style known as the Wall of Sound, produced a run of hit singles in the early 1960s, worked on the last album the Beatles released and on solo records by John Lennon and George Harrison, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By 2003 he had largely withdrawn from the music business and lived in Alhambra.
Spector was booked on suspicion of murder the same day and released on $1 million bail. Nine months later he was charged with murder, and in September 2004 a grand jury indicted him. Six years passed between her death and the verdict. A first jury, which heard the case over five months in 2007 in a televised trial, could not agree, splitting 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. A second jury found him guilty of second-degree murder on April 13, 2009. He was sentenced to 19 years to life. The state courts upheld the conviction, the federal courts declined to disturb it, and the Supreme Court of the United States twice refused to hear his case. He died in state custody in January 2021, at the age of 81, still maintaining that he had not killed her.
Harvey Phillip Spector was born on December 26, 1939, in the Bronx, in New York City. In the early 1950s his family moved to Los Angeles, and he went to Fairfax High School there. With friends from the school he formed a vocal group, the Teddy Bears. At 17 he wrote and produced the group's first record, "To Know Him Is to Love Him," and it became a hit.
He spent about a year at a university in Los Angeles before he dropped out and went back to New York. There he worked with the songwriting and production team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in the circle of writers and publishers centered on the Brill Building. He co-wrote "Spanish Harlem" with Ben E. King and played lead guitar on the Drifters' "On Broadway."
In the early 1960s Spector ran his own label, Philles Records, with a business partner. It was there that he developed the sound that made his name and changed the way records were made: many instruments and layers of echo stacked on one another, each song building toward an enormous climax. The players he used included the arranger Jack Nitzsche, the guitarist Tommy Tedesco, the pianist Leon Russell and the drummer Hal Blaine.
The records sold. Between 1961 and 1965 he produced 20 top 40 hits, and by his mid-twenties he had close to two dozen hit singles to his name and was a millionaire. He produced the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" and records by Darlene Love. In 1965 he produced the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," which the performing-rights organization BMI later cited as the most-played song in the history of American radio. He gave early breaks to Glen Campbell, Sonny Bono and Cher. His 1963 holiday album was a commercial failure on its release and is now regarded as a classic. His methods influenced the Beach Boys and, a decade later, Bruce Springsteen.
In 1966 he produced Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep-Mountain High." The record failed commercially. He shut down Philles and stepped away from the business for three years.
He came back in 1969 with one of the most prominent assignments in popular music: salvaging the Beatles' unfinished "Let It Be," the group's final album. He added strings and a choir to "The Long and Winding Road." Paul McCartney later had those additions removed, and in 2003 a version of the album without them was released.
The work with the Beatles led to work with two of them on their own. Spector co-produced John Lennon's "Imagine" and "Some Time in New York City," worked on George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass," and worked on Lennon's "Rock 'n' Roll," which was released in 1975. He also worked on Leonard Cohen's "Death of a Ladies' Man" and the Ramones' "End of the Century." He also made a brief appearance as an actor in the film "Easy Rider."
In 1989 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Ronettes followed in 2007. By then his own working life in music had long since thinned out; he had largely left the scene in the 1980s and 1990s, and by 2003 he was a wealthy, reclusive figure whom much of the public and much of the industry had stopped thinking about.
The death came in Alhambra in the early morning of Monday, February 3, 2003. Officers of the Alhambra Police Department responded to the call and took Spector into custody. He was booked that day on suspicion of murder and released on $1 million bail. He would remain free on that bail, through hearings, indictment and a full trial, for more than six years.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles County coroner investigated. On March 11, 2003, sheriff's officials announced that they had ruled out suicide. On September 22, 2003, the coroner ruled the death a homicide. Spector denied killing her.
On November 20, 2003, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office charged Spector with murder. He pleaded not guilty and remained free on bail.
The pretrial period was long and unsettled. On February 2, 2004, he dismissed his lawyer and hired a new defense team. That team resigned in August 2004, and a third lead lawyer took over and asked for more time to prepare. In September 2004 a Los Angeles County grand jury indictment charging him with murder was unsealed. At the hearing that followed, Spector, then 64, answered the judge briefly, and he was allowed to remain free on the same $1 million bail. The judge set December 16, 2004, as the earliest possible trial date and agreed to keep the case in downtown Los Angeles rather than move it to Pasadena, near Alhambra, because the downtown courtrooms were larger and both sides expected a heavy press presence.
That trial date came and went. On April 23, 2005, the trial judge ruled that prosecutors could present evidence of earlier incidents in which women said Spector had threatened them; he denied those accounts. On October 13, 2005, the defense failed in an effort to keep out statements Spector had made on the night of the death. On December 9, 2005, one of the prosecutors on the case was appointed to a judgeship, and the trial was delayed again.
In January 2007 the court set jury selection for March 19. On February 16, 2007, the judge ruled that the trial could be televised. Jury selection began in Los Angeles on March 19, 2007, and opening statements were given on April 25.
The prosecution charged second-degree murder, a theory that did not require proof of premeditation or of an intent to kill. Prosecutors presented Spector as an unstable man who had repeatedly threatened women in his company, and they called witnesses who described such encounters. The defense called experts who disputed the prosecution's scientific evidence, and their testimony stretched over weeks. Spector did not testify. On August 27, 2007, the lead lawyer who had taken over in 2004 formally left the defense team. Closing arguments ended on September 7, and the jury received the case on September 10.
Deliberations ran for 12 days. About a week in, the foreman reported that the jury was split 7 to 5. The judge did not declare a mistrial. He withdrew one of the instructions he had given, having decided that it misstated the law, and replaced it with a new instruction that gave the jurors examples of the conclusions they could legitimately draw from the evidence. He then sent them back to deliberate.
On September 26, 2007, the jury reported that it was deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. The judge polled the jurors, and each told him that a unanimous verdict was not possible. He declared a mistrial after about 44 hours of deliberation. Some jurors later spoke to the press without giving their names, and the foreman said that even inside the jury room there was deep regret that they had been unable to agree. The District Attorney's Office announced the same day that it would ask the court for permission to try Spector again, and a hearing was set for October 3. On that date prosecutors confirmed the retrial. Spector left the courthouse on September 26 still free on bail.
The retrial did not begin for more than a year. In 2008 Spector's lawyers asked for the trial judge to be removed from the case, arguing that he was biased in favor of the prosecution. The judge remained on the case and presided over the second trial.
The defense team had changed again. The lead defense lawyer at the first trial did not return, and a different lawyer led the defense at the retrial.
Opening statements in the second trial were given on October 29, 2008. Five women testified about encounters with Spector that, taken together, spanned roughly two decades, from the 1970s into the mid-1990s; one of them had died after testifying at the first trial, and her earlier testimony was played to the new jury on videotape. Again Spector did not testify. None of the musicians and associates from his years in pop music testified for him.
The jurors in the retrial were given a choice the charge itself did not name: they could convict of second-degree murder, or of the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter. Closing arguments began on March 23, 2009. The jury deliberated for about 29 to 30 hours.
On Monday, April 13, 2009, the jury found Spector guilty of second-degree murder and found the sentence enhancements true. It did not choose involuntary manslaughter. Spector, 69, showed no reaction as the verdict was read. His lawyer asked that he be allowed to stay free on bail until sentencing; the judge refused and ordered him taken into custody at once, ending more than six years at liberty on bail. The forewoman said the panel had reached its decision on the totality of the evidence.
His lawyer said afterward that the testimony about incidents decades old had left the defense with very little chance of a fair trial, and that there would be an appeal. Spector continued to deny the murder.
On Friday, May 29, 2009, in Los Angeles Superior Court, Spector was sentenced to 15 years to life for second-degree murder, plus a further four years for one of the enhancements, a total term of 19 years to life. He was ordered to pay restitution and fees. His lawyer told reporters that it would be extremely strong and repeated that Spector had not killed her. He also asked that Spector be moved immediately from the county jail to state prison. Spector was led out of the courtroom as soon as the sentence was pronounced.
The appeal went to the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three, in Los Angeles. Spector's lawyers raised several grounds, and on May 2, 2011, a unanimous three-justice panel rejected all of them and affirmed the judgment. The decision was published as People v. Spector, 194 Cal. App. 4th 1335.
The first ground concerned the trial judge himself. During the first trial, at a hearing held outside the jury's presence, a prosecution expert had testified, and the judge had asked her clarifying questions and used gestures to pin down what she meant before telling her to show the jury. A videotape of that exchange was played at the retrial, over defense objection. Spector argued that the tape had turned the judge into a witness against him, that it was hearsay, that it violated his right to confront the witnesses against him, and that it deprived him of an impartial tribunal. The court disagreed on each point. The judge, it held, had only sought clarification and had never become a witness against Spector; his words and gestures were not offered for their truth but to give context to the expert's answers, so neither the hearsay rule nor the confrontation clause was engaged; and the authorities the defense relied on involved judges who had acted as both judge and witness, which had not happened. The court also found that Spector had waived his right to be present at that hearing under Penal Code section 977.
A related complaint, that prosecutors had used photographs and footage of the judge during closing arguments as if he were a witness, the Court of Appeal declined to consider.
The second main ground was the testimony of the five women. Spector argued that it was propensity evidence of the kind the law forbids, that it was far more prejudicial than probative, and that prosecutors had misused it as proof of a pattern. The court held that it had been properly admitted under Evidence Code section 1101(b) to show the absence of accident, mistake or suicide. A separate item of testimony, a general threat attributed to Spector by a witness, was held admissible to show his state of mind. The court found no reversible error in how the jury had been instructed on that evidence, including a moment when the judge read aloud a paragraph that had been removed from the written instruction and then told the jurors to follow the written version.
The third ground was prosecutorial misconduct in closing argument. The court held that prosecutors had not attacked defense counsel's personal integrity and that their suggestion that the defense experts had been paid to reach the conclusions the defense wanted was a permissible challenge to the experts' credibility. It found the prosecution's argument about a pattern of conduct proper. It also held that there was sufficient evidence to support the conviction.
After the decision Spector's lawyer said a further appeal would be filed because the court had ignored a central issue in the case. On August 17, 2011, the California Supreme Court refused to review it. His lawyers had asked it to consider the arguments about the judge's videotaped comments and the use of the judge's image in closing arguments, which they said had compromised the judge's neutrality.
Spector then took his case to the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that prosecutors had acted improperly in showing the jury a videotape of the judge's statements about an expert's testimony. On February 21, 2012, the Court declined to hear the case and gave no reason.
He next sought a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, naming the warden who held him as the respondent. The case reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as case number 15-56145. The Ninth Circuit decided the appeal against him on June 10, 2016, and denied rehearing on August 24, 2016. His lawyers filed a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court on November 22, 2016, in the case of Phillip Spector v. Ralph M. Diaz, Warden. On January 9, 2017, the Court denied it. That was the last ruling in the case.
Spector spent his last years in the custody of the California state prison system. He died on Saturday, January 16, 2021, at the age of 81. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed his death. He had served a little under twelve years of his sentence.
Spector was convicted of second-degree murder under California Penal Code section 187. The prosecution's theory was implied malice murder. On that theory the prosecution did not have to prove that he had planned the killing or intended to kill; the Court of Appeal noted that implied malice requires an intent to do the dangerous act, which made evidence of his state of mind relevant. In California second-degree murder carries a sentence of 15 years to life. The jury also found true sentence enhancements under Penal Code sections 12022.5 and 12022.53(b), and the judge added four years for the enhancement, producing the total of 19 years to life.
The evidence of the five women came in under Evidence Code section 1101(b). California law generally bars evidence of a person's other conduct when it is offered only to show that he has a bad character and acted in keeping with it, but section 1101(b) permits it when it proves something else, such as intent, motive or the absence of mistake or accident. In upholding its admission, the Court of Appeal relied on what is known as the doctrine of chances: the principle that a run of similar events makes an innocent explanation for one of them objectively less likely. Because the defense had argued that the death was not Spector's doing, the court held, the prosecution was entitled to answer that argument with evidence of his conduct toward other women over the preceding decades. The trial judge was required to weigh the probative value of that evidence against its potential for prejudice, and the appellate court reviewed his ruling only for abuse of discretion.
Spector pleaded not guilty, did not testify at either trial, and denied the killing to the end. His lawyers maintained after the verdict and again at sentencing that he had not killed her. The first jury could not reach a verdict; the second convicted him of second-degree murder, rejecting the lesser offense of involuntary manslaughter. No appeal succeeded.
The accounts of the five women who testified at the trials were admitted to show the absence of accident or mistake, not as separate offenses, and Spector denied them.
December 26, 1939: Harvey Phillip Spector is born in the Bronx, New York City.
1961 to 1965: Produces 20 top 40 hits, largely on his Philles label.
1965: Produces the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'."
1966: "River Deep-Mountain High" fails commercially; he closes Philles and withdraws from the business for three years.
1969: Takes on the Beatles' "Let It Be."
1989: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
February 3, 2003: The death in Alhambra, California; Spector is booked on suspicion of murder and released on $1 million bail.
March 11, 2003: Sheriff's officials say suicide has been ruled out.
September 22, 2003: The coroner rules the death a homicide.
November 20, 2003: Spector is charged with murder and pleads not guilty.
February 2, 2004: He dismisses his first lawyer and hires a new defense team.
August 24, 2004: That team resigns; a new lead lawyer takes over.
September 2004: A grand jury indictment for murder is unsealed; he remains free on bail.
April 23, 2005: The judge allows evidence of earlier incidents involving women.
February 16, 2007: The judge rules the trial may be televised.
March 19, 2007: Jury selection begins in Los Angeles.
April 25, 2007: Opening statements in the first trial.
September 10, 2007: The first jury receives the case.
September 26, 2007: The jury deadlocks 10 to 2 for conviction; mistrial declared.
October 3, 2007: Prosecutors confirm a retrial.
October 29, 2008: Opening statements in the retrial.
March 23, 2009: Closing arguments begin in the retrial.
April 13, 2009: Guilty of second-degree murder; Spector is taken into custody.
May 29, 2009: Sentenced to 19 years to life.
May 2, 2011: The California Court of Appeal affirms the conviction.
August 17, 2011: The California Supreme Court denies review.
February 21, 2012: The Supreme Court of the United States declines to hear the case.
June 10, 2016: The Ninth Circuit decides his federal habeas appeal against him; rehearing denied August 24, 2016.
January 9, 2017: The Supreme Court of the United States denies certiorari.
January 16, 2021: Spector dies in state custody in California, aged 81.