Music producer Phil Spector during a hearing in an Alhambra, Calif., courthouse Friday, July 2, 2004. Spector is charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra mansion last year. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Posted on 08/24/2004 6:57:46 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Music producer Phil Spector has hired former John Gotti attorney Bruce Cutler to defend him against charges of murdering a B-movie actress, attorneys said Tuesday.
Spector will now be represented by Roger Jay Rosen and Cutler, the flamboyant attorney who long kept the notorious New York mob boss out of prison, Rosen said.
The two filed substitution paperwork with the court last Thursday and a judge approved the switch Monday.
"Bruce and I are going to be working hand in hand," said Rosen, a Los Angeles attorney.
Spector's previous defense attorney, Leslie Abramson, said she was surprised by the announcement.
"As far as I understand Cutler is coming in on the case," she told The Associated Press. "They haven't filed a substitution with us and I'd certainly like to see a copy of it. We have signed nothing."
Cutler could not immediately be reached for comment at his New York City office.
Federal prosecutors in New York have portrayed Cutler as "house counsel" for the Gambino crime family. He won three earlier trials for Gotti before prosecutors were able to get him disqualified from the defense team by playing 1990 tape recordings on which he had conversations with Gotti about other defendants.
Gotti died in prison in 2002.
Spector, famed for creating rock 'n' roll's "wall of sound" recording technique in the 1960s, is charged in the fatal shooting of Lana Clarkson in his suburban Alhambra mansion on Feb. 3, 2003.
Clarkson, 40, had gone home with him from the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip where she was a hostess. She was best known as the star of Roger Corman's cult film classic "Barbarian Queen."
The case is scheduled for a status conference on Sept. 14 and a preliminary hearing on Oct. 20. The 64-year-old producer is free on $1 million bail.
Abramson was hired in February to replace Spector's original attorney, Robert Shapiro, who was a member of O.J. Simpson's "Dream Team" of defenders.
Abramson is best known for defending Erik Menendez, who was convicted with brother Lyle for the shotgun murders of parents Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion on Aug. 20, 1989.
The slime hires slime.
Music producer Phil Spector during a hearing in an Alhambra, Calif., courthouse Friday, July 2, 2004. Spector is charged with murdering actress Lana Clarkson at his Alhambra mansion last year. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
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