LAWFUEL – Despite defense objections, testimony from a woman who contradicts earlier evidence was admitted by the Judge in the Phil Spector trial, Fox News reports.
A woman who said Lana Clarkson was her best friend for 20 years testified Thursday at Phil Spector’s murder trial, refuting testimony by another witness that Clarkson was depressed around the time of her death in the music producer’s home.
Nili Hudson, called as a prosecution rebuttal witness, produced a letter written by Punkin Pie Laughlin a year after Clarkson died. In it, Laughlin told friends: ‘My Lana, my best friend, my sister, my right arm, was violently taken from me at the hands of Phil Spector.”
Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler admitted the letter into evidence over objections from the defense. He told jurors it was being offered to show inconsistency in Laughlin’s witness stand claim that she would not have said Spector should “fry” for Clarkson’s death because “I don’t believe that.”
Hudson said the letter came with a December 2003 Christmas card from Laughlin and was a multiple mailing.
Spector, 67, is accused of murdering Clarkson on Feb. 3, 2003, within hours of going home with him from her job at a nightclub where they had just met. The defense claims Clarkson, 40, was despondent about fading career prospects in acting and pulled the trigger on the gun that went off in her mouth.
