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Spector team targets chauffeur
22/05/2007 11:58 - (SA)
John Rogers
Los Angeles - The defense in Phil Spector's murder trial sought to show Monday that his immigrant chauffeur spoke English poorly and was so frightened after learning that someone had been shot to death that he wrongly implicated the music producer.
Adriano De Souza, a Brazilian chauffeur whose native language is Portuguese, testified that Spector came out of his home about 05:00 on February 3 2003, with a gun in his hand and said, "I think I killed somebody," as the body of actress Lana Clarkson lay slumped in a chair inside the mansion's foyer.
Defence attorney Bradley Brunon, during a long cross-examination, noted that De Souza originally told officers that morning that Spector had said, "I think I shot somebody."
Then he asked him, "Do you think you might have heard, 'I think somebody was killed?"'
"No," De Souza replied.
Although he could not explain why he had changed his statement from "shot" to "killed," he was adamant that he had heard Spector speak clearly.
Tired and hungry
De Souza conceded that he was tired and hungry, as well as frightened, after hearing what he thought was a gunshot and then seeing Clarkson's body with blood on her face.
"It's hard to see and hear exactly when something is so frightening, isn't it?" Brunon asked.
"Yes, a little bit," De Souza said.
Clarkson, best known for the 1985 film Barbarian Queen, was working as a hostess in a VIP room at the House of Blues when she met Spector shortly before 2 a.m. on the morning of her death.
De Souza, who has testified that he drove Spector to a series of restaurants from Beverly Hills to the Sunset Strip, said Clarkson initially refused when Spector asked her to go home with him, then decided to join him for a drink.
The defence claims Clarkson shot herself.
The chauffeur said he was operating on little sleep before going to work for Spector at 19:00 the night before. He said he took small naps in the car throughout the evening.
'In what language do you dream?'
"When you dream, do you dream in the Portuguese language or in the English language?" Brunon suddenly asked De Souza.
Prosecutor Alan Jackson objected on grounds the question assumed facts not in evidence and was irrelevant.
Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler interrupted and spoke directly to De Souza.
"Do you dream, sir?" the judge asked.
De Souza said his dreams were in Portuguese and English.
Brunon suggested during questioning that De Souza's current abilities in English are better now than they were at the time of the killing.
"Back in 2003, before you had four additional, four-plus additional years of English, living in an English-speaking country, when you heard English at that time did you first translate it to Portuguese in your own mind and then translate the answer from Portuguese to English and then answer in English?" Brunon asked.
De Souza indicated he did that when he first started learning English, but, "At that time I was good in both languages."
- AP
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South Africa
