LOS ANGELES — Deliberations in the Phil Spector murder trial were thrown into turmoil Tuesday by two striking legal developments: A deadlock in the jury room and a move by the judge to add a new count, manslaughter, to a case that has been in the hands of the jury for seven days.

Both emerged during an extraordinary afternoon hearing in which the jury foreman said that, after four rounds of voting, the panel is split 7 to 5 as to Spector's guilt in the shooting of actress Lana Clarkson.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler instructed the foreman and his colleagues not to say whether the majority favored acquittal or conviction, but he asked each of them whether they believed reaching a verdict in the five-month case was still possible. (VIDEO)

Eight, including the foreman, said they felt the impasse was insurmountable, but four said further instructions by the judge, particularly on the issue of reasonable doubt, might bring about consensus.

"It's a long shot," acknowledged one of the jurors who did not rule out the possibility of reaching a verdict.

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Fidler sent the panelists home early and urged them to rest.

"I want you to take a break," he said.

The jurors, a generally spirited group whose peals of laughter can be heard through the walls of the courtroom during coffee breaks, were grim-faced as they filed out of the jury box. They are to return to court at 10 a.m. Wednesday to resume deliberations.

Spector's lawyers requested a mistrial based on the deep division in the jury, but Fidler denied it, citing the jurors who thought that additional instruction might lead to a verdict. The judge, however, acknowledged that rereading jurors the definition of reasonable doubt, a copy of which they already have in the jury room, was unlikely to break a deadlock.

"Based on 25 years of experience, rereading reasonable doubt rarely has any positive impact," the judge said.

Outside the presence of the jury, Fidler revealed the second bombshell. He told lawyers that he had recently come to believe he had erred in only allowing jurors to consider a second-degree murder count against Spector, 67.

Neither side requested manslaughter or other lesser charges be presented to jurors at the close of testimony, and Fidler said at the time that he did not feel the facts of Clarkson's death supported anything but second-degree murder or acquittal.

On the bench Tuesday, Fidler said that, during deliberations, he had come upon a 1999 decision by the state Supreme Court that left him "extremely concerned" about his ruling. The case concerned a man who shot his wife at point-blank range and was convicted of voluntary manslaughter.

The judge had said previously that he could not imagine any circumstance in which Clarkson was shot in the mouth that did not amount to either second-degree murder or an acquittal.

But he said the case suggested that involuntary manslaughter should be an option for the Spector jury.

"The fact is we don't know what took place" in the producer's house the night of the shooting, the judge said.