Music producer Phil Spector will have to wait until the middle of next week at least before he will learn of his fate, after the jury in his murder retrial was sent home.
The 68-year-old is accused of murdering actress Lana Clarkson, who died of a gunshot fired into her mouth while seated in the foyer of his hill-top mansion in February 2003.
The jury in the high-profile case retired on Thursday to consider its decision and was sent home yesterday, but will not resume deliberations until Wednesday, owing to a state holiday in California on March 31st.
It is not the first time Spector - who in his heyday worked with Tina Turner, The Beatles and The Ramones - has faced a prolonged jury wait.
Following his original six-month trial in 2007 for the murder of Ms Clarkson, he endured 12 days of deliberations only to learn the jury was deadlocked at 10-2, with the majority favouring conviction.
As Californian law requires a unanimous verdict, the trial was abandoned, and a retrial began at Los Angeles Superior Court last October.
Spector, who attended the court with his wife Rachelle and a bodyguard, looked haggard as the trial drew to a close this week.
The prosecution in the case maintains that Spector is a “demonic maniac”, who killed the 40-year-old actress when she resisted his sexual advances, and had a history of threatening women with guns.
Defence lawyers contend that Ms Clarkson, best known for her role in the 1985 cult classic Barbarian Queen, was depressed over her career and killed herself at the mansion in Alhambra, California. They pointed to forensic evidence, including blood spatter and DNA, to support this theory.
Judge Larry Paul Fidler gave the six male and six female jurors the option of considering the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, which he had not allowed as an alternative in the first trial.
Spector, who made his name inventing the Wall of Sound recording technique in the 1960s, faces between 15 years and life imprisonment if convicted of second degree murder. A manslaughter sentence could see him jailed for two to four years.
AP
280246 MAR 09