
LOS ANGELES — By all accounts, only two people know for sure what happened inside Phil Spector's mansion the night of Feb. 3, 2003. One is dead and on Tuesday, the other said he was his exercising his constitutional right not to reveal what he knows.
Spector confirmed to a judge that he has opted not to testify on his own behalf shortly after his lawyers announced they had finished calling witnesses and were prepared to rest their case.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler pressed the music legend on his decision, reminding him that, even if his lawyers had decided for strategic reasons not to call him to the stand, he could overrule their will.
"If it was your decision that you wanted to testify, that would control," Fidler told Spector, who sat at the defense team surrounded by five attorneys. (VIDEO)
"Do you wish to waive, give up your right to testify in this trial?" the judge asked.
Spector, dressed in a sharp black suit and crimson tie, listened to the whispered advice of one of his lawyers and then replied in a firm voice, "Yes."
His decision not to take the stand was expected. Spector would have to answer for statements he made to police that contradict death scene evidence as well as three decades of incidents in which he allegedly threatened people with guns. Although his defense team tentatively rested its case Tuesday, they left open the possibility of presenting testimony from doctors who treated Lana Clarkson, the actress shot to death in Spector's mansion.
The end of the defense means jurors are likely to hear closing arguments in the next few weeks. The trial began in April, and the timing of its conclusion has been in question because of the illness of one of Spector's attorneys, Linda Kenney-Baden. The New York lawyer, however, was back in court Tuesday and told the judge she felt better.
Spector, 67, faces 15 years to life in prison if convicted. He and Clarkson were alone in his mansion when a revolver discharged, killing her. His defense claims the actress shot herself, perhaps because she was depressed over her career.
Prosecutors, who claim Spector killed her because she curtailed a hoped-for romantic encounter, began the final phase of their rebuttal case with testimony from a woman who said the producer twice held her captive at gunpoint in his home.
Devra Robitaille, a British music composer who dated and worked for Spector, was the fifth woman to assert at the trial that he menaced her with a weapon.
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