Phil Spector convicted of second-degree murder

Famous record producer Phil Spector must serve at least 18 years of a mandatory life sentence for killing Lana Clarkson in 2003, Los Angeles Times reported.

A Los Angeles jury convicted Phil Spector of second-degree murder Monday, making the legendary record producer who worked with the Beatles and a host of other pop stars the first celebrity found guilty of murder on Hollywood's home turf in at least 40 years.

The verdict read in a tense, standing-room-only courtroom came six years and two trials after police found Lana Clarkson, a statuesque blond actress, shot to death in a chair in Spector's 30-room Alhambra mansion.

Spector's attorney immediately said he would appeal. The lawyer asked that Spector remain free on $1-million bail until the sentence was imposed, but a prosecutor protested, citing Spector's history of menacing people with guns and his incentive to flee the jurisdiction.

During the trial and a 2007 proceeding that ended in a hung jury, Judge Larry Paul Fidler heard extensive testimony from women who said Spector terrorized them at gunpoint, and he ordered that Spector be taken into custody immediately.

«Public safety and public protection are paramount,» Fidler said.

Weinberg said the judge's decision to allow those women to testify about events stretching back three decades would be among the grounds for appeal.

«We believe analytically there is absolutely no legal basis for the admissibility of that evidence,» the lawyer said.