Phil Spector gets a new lawyer

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A San Francisco lawyer says he will represent Phil Spector in his retrial on a murder charge and that he could not be ready to proceed until September.

Doron Weinberg's proposed date for the new trial would put it exactly one year after the record producer's first one ended in a hung jury.

Weinberg told Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler on Friday that he needs five months to review all the material from Spector's first trial.

A mistrial was declared September 26 when jurors could not agree whether he had shot actress Lana Clarkson in 2003.

Clarkson's family was in the courtroom Friday, as were Spector and his wife, as the schedule was discussed.

Members of Spector's previous defense team either resigned or were dismissed after the mistrial. Weinberg said the only remaining lawyer, Christopher Plourd, is involved in two death penalty cases and could not be available to try the Spector case until the fall.

Spector, 67, was a hit-making producer decades ago with a recording technique known as the "Wall of Sound" that revolutionized rock music.

Clarkson, best known for the 1985 cult film "Barbarian Queen," was working as a hostess at a House of Blues night club when she met Spector and went home with him.

She died of a gunshot fired inside her mouth while seated in a foyer in Spector's suburban Los Angeles mansion. The prosecution claimed Spector shot her; the defense said she shot herself. E-mail to a friend

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