Ethics of Spector witness questioned

A key expert in the Phil Spector murder trial was needled on the witness stand Wednesday for being in bed with the defense -- literally.

A prosecutor asked forensic pathologist Michael Baden, who is married to Spector attorney Linda Kenney Baden, during cross-examination if he would end up “sleeping on the couch for several months” if his testimony did not favor the defense’s case.

Judge Larry Paul Fidler quickly turned the heated exchange into a light moment by striking the question and wryly noting it “calls for speculation.” The courtroom -- including Baden -- erupted in laughter.

But the independence and credibility of forensic scientists remains a crucial battleground in the final days of the trial.

The defense team, which Spector recently declared is now led by Linda Kenney Baden, has pledged to prove through science its client did not fatally shoot actress Lana Clarkson in his Alhambra home on Feb. 3, 2003.

Instead of irrefutable science, however, the defense has been hit by two rulings of misconduct involving famous experts it had expected would impress the jury.

On Tuesday, Fidler decided Spector’s attorneys deliberately hid from prosecutors that Baden would unveil a new theory regarding Clarkson’s death.

Baden apparently stunned the prosecution when he testified that he believed Clarkson had lived for several minutes after being shot, contrary to the autopsy finding that she died instantly when her spinal cord was severed by a bullet.

The theory could explain how Clarkson’s blood got on Spector’s jacket.

In May, Fidler held that Henry C. Lee, perhaps the nation’s best-known criminalist, withheld from prosecutors a fingernail-sized object he plucked from the crime scene. Lee was to have been the defense’s star witness, but with the end of testimony looming, it appeared unlikely he would take the stand.

Baden, the chief medical examiner for the New York State Police who has had his own television show, may have been a fourth-quarter replacement in the role of defense luminary.

Now, “there is a cumulative problem the defense is facing,” said Robert Hirschhorn, a Dallas lawyer and jury consultant who has worked with Baden and Lee. “Two big guns for the defense now have what appear to be ethical problems,” he said.

Fidler will soon decide whether part of Baden’s testimony will be stricken, or if he will instruct the jury to question the credibility of Baden’s statements because of the lapse.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Alan Jackson spent much of Wednesday questioning the financial stake Baden and his wife have in Spector’s defense.

Baden said he expected to be paid about $110,000 for his work on the trial, which he estimated totaled 30 to 40 days since Clarkson’s death.

Jackson asked Baden if, besides his fee, he had “an additional interest in watching your wife succeed in this endeavor.”

“No, my only interest is that Mr. Spector gets a fair hearing, based on the information that is available to me,” Baden replied.

Jackson asked Baden if, on behalf of his wife, he orchestrated the testimony of two pathologists who preceded him on the stand, Vincent DiMaio and Werner Spitz, who agreed with his opinion Clarkson shot herself.

Baden said he could not have done so, because DiMaio and Spitz are greater authorities than he. “I’m a schlemiel compared to them,” he said, drawing more laughs from jurors.

Jean Rosenbluth, a USC law professor following the trial, said a perceived conflict of interest because of his marriage likely will be less important to jurors than the possibility the defense experts’ fees compromised their independence. “The fact they are paid such large amounts of money, that could do more damage than whether there was some kind of pillow talk,” she said.

Loyola Law School professor Stanley Goldman, who has also sat in the courtroom during the trial, said the pointed cross-examination could backfire if jurors have warmed to Linda Kenney Baden after seeing her for months in the courtroom. “If they see Jackson as basically attacking her integrity and the integrity of her husband, it could very well be dangerous,” he said.

Baden’s assertion that Clarkson might have lived briefly after being shot could support a defense argument that Spector’s jacket was bloodied when Clarkson coughed on it as he rendered her aid. The prosecution contends the blood spattered onto the jacket when Clarkson was hit by the bullet from the gun fired by Spector.

Baden will return to the witness stand today.

peter.hong@latimes.com