Is the public consensus that Spector is guilty? I do not recall any news story that suggested that his guilt was foregone.

The only other possibility is that the woman shot herself in the mouth.

With Spector's history, and events immediately after the death, from what I have read, it is foregone in my mind. . .

Why does the fact that he's wealthy affect your opinion?

Because wealthy people regularly get away with things that would have "average" people thrown in jail, with the key being melted down and thrown away?

"Because wealthy people regularly get away with things that would have "average" people thrown in jail, with the key being melted down and thrown away?"
posted by dg 18 September | 17:43

That's a pretty classist assumption, dg.

"With Spector's history, and events immediately after the death, from what I have read, it is foregone in my mind. . ."
posted by danf 18 September | 17:37

From what I've read, I think Spector hasn't been proven guilty, as do at least 5 of the jurors, at this point. The defense hasn't been great, but the prosecution's case for murder just isn't there. Murder 2 at less than point blank range? Improbable, in my mind.

That's a pretty classist assumption, dg.
*shrug*
I call 'em as I see 'em.

That's a pretty classist assumption, dg.

No, it's not. The poor generally rely on public defenders, while the rich generally can afford to hire private defenders. (The middle-class generaly has to take on massive debt in order to do it.) Imprisonment rates have been shown to correlate to those factors. (And that's not to bad-mouth public defenders -- I've known some amazing, commited public defenders who are damn fine lawyers, including my ex-husband, a public appellate defender, and my brother-in-law, a former federal public defender for capital cases. Even the very best public defenders however, tend to have far higher case loads and far fewer resources than even mediocre private defenders.) A top-notch defense in this country is a luxury, frankly.

This is most obvious when you examine the stats for capital sentences -- over 90% of the 3000+ inmates on death row relied on public defenders. The average length of a capital trial is about a week. As Justice William O. Douglas said, "One searches in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this country."

Seriously, there are pretty much two justice systems in this country: one for the rich, and one for everyone else. That's not a classist assumption, it's an inevitability of a class system.

O.J. did it.

That's a pretty classist assumption, dg.

paulsc, judges can be bought and a lot of money can buy you lawyers who are experts at obscuring the truth. That's not an assumption, that's a fact.

I think a manslaughter conviction is more likely - my own view is that from the evidence it's more than likely that he killed her, but proving that he did it intentionally, which would be required for a 1st degree murder conviction, is problematic. With manslaughter the jury could convict on the basis that it was accidental or reckless.

Of course scody and jonmc are correct that being rich gets you better lawyers.

But, although 'wealthy people can afford better lawyers and so are convicted less even when guilty' is a reasonable statement, 'Spector is wealthy, so he's guilty' is not. We have no reason, at the moment, to suppose that the jury being hung has the slightest thing to do with Spector's wealth, and every reason to suppose it has to do with the complexity of the case.

And think of all the people who died crashing into Spector's Wall of Sound. When will he ever be made accountable for THAT?

We have no reason, at the moment, to suppose that the jury being hung has the slightest thing to do with Spector's wealth, and every reason to suppose it has to do with the complexity of the case.
Of course. However; I don't think it's an unreasonable extrapolation to say that, had he relied on the limited resources of a public defender, the jury may well have had a different package of evidence to ponder. It's also conceivable that, in this particular case, it wouldn't have made a difference, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

"The only other possibility is that the woman shot herself in the mouth."

Why do you discount that possibility?

Occam's razor?

Occam's razor says she did it, 'cause it wants to cut him out as an extra unneeded element.

That's misrepresenting Occam's razor -- it's not the number of people involved that necessarily determines the simplicty of the explanation. (By that logic, suicide would always be more likely than murder in such cases, simply because it involves one person rather than two -- but of course, on the face of it, that's obviously untrue.)

Occam's razor says that of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred. In this case, there are two basic explanations: 1) a man with an established history of gun-related violence towards women (and other men, for that matter) shoots a woman in his own home with his own gun (a theory supported by physical evidence and post-mortem exam); or 2) a woman with no history of suicidal behavior decides on the spur of the moment to kill herself in someone else's home with someone else's gun (a theory unsupported by physical evidence and post-mortem exam). The latter is not "simpler" merely because it involves one person rather than two.

Apparently Phil Spector actually pulled a gun on a violinist I know -- and the guy is absolutely the sweetest man on Earth so when I saw his name listed as a previous target of Phil Spector violence in a news article? I was in total shock. Guess he made the mistake of getting caught imitating Phil's lisp during a recording session or something and suddenly there was a pistol at his head.

I don't know the evidence here, but I do know that the guy should've been arrested many, many times before now. He's a total scary nutjob.

I say Occam did it, in the Conservatory, with the razor.

That's a pretty classist assumption, dg.

That's true. O.J. got the same trial and verdict that any black man who was accused of killing a white ex-wife he'd previously abused and leaving a trail of her blood from his car into his house would've gotten.

You missed the point, kirkaracha. matthewr nailed it. Here's the base assumption: Most subsets of set x are y, therefore, a priori, x1 is y. That is simply an unfounded assumption. Change it to x1 is more likely to be y than an individual from the population a large and you'd be ok.

What does it mean that I had a dream about this last night? Spector was put on death row in it, by the way.