Phil Spector's defence lawyer Linda Kenney-Baden completed her summing up in the long running murder trial on Friday by concluding "this case exemplifies reasonable doubt". As previously reported, last Thursday Kenney-Baden accused the prosecution in the case from resorting to theatrics and speculation because of a lack of hard evidence to prove that Phil Spector did, as they claim, shoot dead actress Lana Clarkson at his Beverly Hills home in February 2003.
On Friday, and despite technical problems with her powerpoint presentation, Kenney-Baden again told the jury that if they base their judgement on science they must acquit her client because her side's forensic evidence, she claims, was so much stronger than that presented by the prosecution. Rounding up on the prosecution's case, she told the court room: "Cute jokes, tall tales, theatrics, what ifs, possibilities, embellishments, speculation and salacious scandal fit only for gossip rags, replaces the lack of forensic evidence".
Kenny-Baden's summing up for the defence followed a forceful summing up for the prosecution by Alan Jackson on Wednesday during which the chief prosecutor said that the defence had "assassinated" Clarkson's character by claiming she was suicidal in the run up to her death, telling the jury that far from shooting herself "she [Clarkson] was murdered once on February 3rd 2003, by Phillip Spector when he put a gun in her mouth and that gun went off".
After Kenny-Baden's final stab at convincing the jury that Spector is innocent, Pat Dixon of the District Attorney's office provided the rebuttal to the defence's closing argument. Lacking the theatrics of Jackson, perhaps to fight off the defence's claims that the prosecution have been overly theatrical to cover up for their lack of evidence, Dixon went through each defence argument in turn and tried to demonstrate why they were wrong, in particular disputing the defence's claim that Spector's former driver Adriano de Souza, who claimed that shortly after the shooting his former employer said "I think I killed somebody", had a poor grasp of the English language and had misheard his then boss.
With the rebuttal done Judge Larry Fidler sent the jury home. They are due back in court today to begin their deliberations.