Celeb Jurisprudence: Witness Describes Going Down The Rabbit Hole With A Looney Tunes Phil Spector

Kathy Sullivan testified that she initially thought it was silly for Spector to walk them to a car with a gun, and that he looked like the cartoon character Elmer Fudd when he came downstairs with the weapon while wearing plaid.

She said the next morning as they were about to depart, Spector left them in the foyer and returned carrying a long gun. Sullivan said she asked Spector what the weapon was for.

"He said, 'Protection,"' she testified. [...]

"Susan [a friend] and I were pretty crazy and we were working on a lounge act...And he would sit there very nicely, just sort of nodding, and at the end of it he wouldn't tell us to shut up. He would simply say, 'Have you thought about this song?' and he would lead us to something else.

While it doesn't put any serious cracks in the prosecution's "eccentric nutjob + gun fetish = guilty" argument, Sullivan's version does paint a far more benignly cartoonish Phil Spector, who splits his time between hunting wascally wapists and leading the gang in musical numbers. If the jury believes that, perhaps they would also believe that Lana Clarkson could easily have easily saved herself the night in question, simply by placing a finger in the barrel at the last moment, splintering the weapon into a dozen twisted strands and covering the hapless defendant in a coat of gun powder.

• Waitress: Gun-toting Spector looked like Elmer Fudd [CNN.com]