Facing the music

Somewhere in Los Angeles tonight are nine men and three women whose sleep may well be troubled.

Are they struggling with the fate of Phil Spector?

They've been watched, all these 57 days of the trial, by Court TV's Beth Karas.

Beth Karas: Right from jury selection, they're starting to take their sides. And as the evidence unfolds, they're either strengthening that position and maybe they'll start going to the other sides.

(In court, addressing jurors)
Judge: Keep an open mind…

They were sent away late Monday morning to the small, plain jury room up on the ninth floor of the criminal court house. It's the same floor and the same hallway where the O.J. Simpson jury pronounced its quick not guilty.

And with them, in a twist that is surely stranger than fiction, is a senior producer with Dateline NBC, selected as juror number two.

So-- special access, you ask? Well, no. In fact, the arrangement has been a royal pain, since by court directive the case, the trial, even the name of the defendant, may not be mentioned by the producer to staff, or staff to producer.

So we can only suspect they are aware that no Hollywood jury has ever found a major celebrity guilty of murder.

Nor do we know if this is the argument they are considering.

(In court)
Defense: The government has again given you stories instead of science, they've given you personality instead of proficiency, they've given you speculation rather than certainty, they've given you emotion rather than evidence, fiction, rather than facts, and deceptions rather than details.

In its closing, the defense asked the jury to accept its experts' version of the science of the case.

The prosecution focused on the driver's account of death at The Castle and on those women with their stories about Phil Spector and his guns.

Keith Morrison: What's going to grab them the most? Is it going to be story or science or personality? What?
Beth Karas: The jurors cannot ignore the science and they cannot ignore the story. The defense has asked them to focus on science only and not to consider Phil Spector's past with women because those were many, many years ago. But it's powerful evidence.

As was prosecutor Jackson's closing, which was as powerful, some court watchers said, as they've seen in years.

(In court)
Prosecution: Lana Clarkson … she's been murdered twice. She was murdered once on February 3, 2003, when he put a gun in her mouth and that gun went off. And her character has been assassinated over the past four months, through the presentation of the defense evidence, attempting to paint her in a way that simply isn't true.

But was Lana Clarkson suicidally depressed, as the defense contended? Only the jury can decide that now.

Keith Morrison: Kind of thing that could produce an argument in the jury room.
Beth Karas: Yes, but did she go to a stranger's house and shoot herself in front of him? … That's what may be difficult to wrap their heads around.

And Punkin Pie? What of the woman who claimed to be Lana's best friend, and proposed the depression story?

Keith Morrison: What kind of an impact would she have had on the jury?
Beth Karas: You know, the first time she came into the courtroom, when it was announced, "Punkin Pie," the jurors sat up.

But then there were those others to counter Ms. Pie and that letter she sent soon after Lana's death, contending her friend died at the hands of Phil Spector.

Keith Morrison: So for the jury, what? Do you disregard her completely?
Beth Karas: I don't know that they'll disregard her completely because there certainly is corroboration that they were close friends.

The jury, of course, is not with us tonight -- they've been ordered to avoid news about the trial. Instead they'll be stewing in private about arguments like this:

Baden: The only question is who put the gun in Lana Clarkson's mouth and who pulled the trigger.

Or they could let their minds wander back before the scene at The Castle, before the movie in the back seat of the Mercedes -- the parking lot, House of Blues, closing time.

Alan Jackson: If you could say but one thing to Lana Clarkson, right then, you'd lean over and you'd whisper, "Don't go."

Fantasy, of course.

Instead, in the next hours, or days, 12 ordinary humans will announce the fate of the aging prince of rock and roll.

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