Spector trial claim: bombshell or sideshow?

Gregory Diamond went to law school but never passed the bar exam. An aspiring television producer, he has yet to sell a show that made it on air.

But this week, he managed to shake and stir the Phil Spector murder trial with an allegation that he saw a member of the defense team pick something up off the floor where actress Lana Clarkson died.

The object, if it exists -- perhaps a tooth, perhaps a fingernail -- is potentially a key piece of evidence and was never revealed to the prosecution, according to court testimony.

Diamond's explosive assertion brought a parade of famous lawyers and experts to the courtroom and will continue to cast a shadow over the trial as it heads into its third week. The central figure in the imbroglio, famed criminalist Henry Lee, is out of the country, and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler has said that he will not decide what to do until he hears from him.

By week's end, it was unclear whether Diamond's allegation would result in a showing of wrongdoing by the defense, or simply represented the kind of spectacular but ultimately pointless sideshow that often erupts in celebrity trials.

Spector defense attorney Roger Rosen made it clear that he saw the matter as a distraction: "When you start televising things, slime oozes up from under the rocks," he said of Diamond.

But in three days of testimony, there was no agreement on whether anything was taken from the crime scene, who took it, what it was or what relevance it might have to the murder case.

"Maybe we have a tempest in a teapot," Fidler said at one point. "Maybe we don't."

USC law professor Jean Rosenbluth, who has been watching the trial, said, "It appeared on at least some level [Diamond] was telling the truth. What the truth here is, I'm not sure any of us will know."

Clarkson was shot to death Feb. 3, 2003, in Spector's mansion in Alhambra. Prosecutors in 2004 first raised the possibility that the defense, in a crime scene sweep the day after the shooting, may have taken a piece of Clarkson's acrylic fingernail from the red-carpeted foyer where her seated and slumped body was found.

The significance of the nail, which the coroner reported missing from Clarkson's right hand, has never been completely clear. It has been described variously as a broken fragment, which could suggest that Clarkson fought with Spector before he shot her, or stained with gunshot residue, which could help show that Clarkson shot herself. The prosecution contends that Spector shot Clarkson when she tried to leave his house, while the defense contends that the shooting was an "accidental suicide."