LOS ANGELES — A forensic pathologist hired by Phil Spector's defense maintained the death of an actress was a suicide Wednesday in the face of a blistering cross-examination in which a prosecutor accused of him being an advocate for the pop music legend's innocence instead of an objective scientist.

Dr. Vincent Di Maio's second day of testimony began with a defense attorney gently leading him through a list of evidence he said pointed to Lana Clarkson shooting herself in Spector's mansion. By afternoon, however, his turn on the stand had devolved into a series of belligerent exchanges with the prosecutor concerning his conclusions and methodology.

"I told the jury the truth!" Di Maio shouted after Deputy District Attorney Alan Jackson charged that he had misled the panel about the significance of gunshot residue evidence.

"Actually what you told the jury was a half truth," the prosecutor snapped back. (VIDEO)

The combative cross-examination came after Di Maio, a retired Texas medical examiner renowned nationally for his textbook on gunshot wounds, had spent several hours telling jurors that an unbiased look at the evidence a government pathologist relied on in ruling Clarkson's death a murder actually pointed to suicide.

Story continues

"What you have is objective evidence that is most consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot," Di Maio testified.

In addition to gunshot residue, blood spatter evidence and statistics on suicide he outlined Tuesday, Di Maio cited a bruise on Clarkson's tongue which the medical examiner, Dr. Louis Pena, testified was consistent with Spector shoving a revolver into her mouth.

Di Maio called that theory "impossible" given the anatomy of the mouth and said the bruise was instead the result of the force of gases exploding as she pulled the trigger.

He said his reading of e-mails and other evidence from Clarkson's personal computer painted her as a depressed, destitute woman with drug and alcohol problems, "no skills," and flagging prospects in Hollywood.

"She was an actress who was 40 years of age. I'm sorry. It's sex discrimination but that's the way it is," Di Maio said with a shrug.

Pena had described Clarkson as a "hopeful" and happy person with no history of depression.

The witness brushed off prosecution claims that Spector had moved Clarkson's head after the shooting, saying that the shift of her head from the right to the left could be explained by "involuntary twitches" that sometimes occurred following death by suicide.

Di Maio also dismissed the prosecutor's contention that the muzzle of the .38 special blew off a piece of Clarkson's acrylic nail as she tried to push the gun out of her mouth.

He said it was instead knocked off by the weapon's recoil an, if her finger were inside her mouth, the blast would have melted the nail and left her other finger "covered with blood, soot, powder and tissue." The finger, the pathologist observed, was "pristine."

Dr. Vincent Di Maio a forensic expert on gunshot wounds, illustrates the wounds sustained by actress Lana Clarkson using a plastic model.

While Pena and a prosecution criminalist have said they were unable to determine from blood evidence the position of Clarkson's hands at the time of the shot, Di Maio said blood spots led him to conclude they wrapped around the gun grip with her thumbs on the trigger.

He used his own hands and a clear plastic model of Clarkson's head and neck to demonstrate how he said she held the weapon.