US:Forensic scientist Henry C Lee has come under fire in the Phil Spector murder trial, with Judge Larry Paul Fidler ruling on Wednesday that Dr Lee withheld evidence from prosecutors.
At issue was a small, white object three people said they saw at the crime scene. Two of the three, former Spector defence lawyer Sara Caplan and a defence investigator, said they saw Dr Lee pick up the object in the hall of Spector's mansion in Alhambra.
Prosecutors say it was a piece of Lana Clarkson's acrylic fingernail, which deputy district attorney Patrick Dixon said in court could show that Ms Clarkson's hand was in front of her face when she was shot and that "her hands and her fingers were not on the trigger".
Spector is charged with murdering Ms Clarkson, who was found shot in the mouth in his home on February 3rd, 2003. He says Ms Clarkson shot herself and has pleaded not guilty.
Spector's lawyers say Dr Lee will still be a key witness for them: he is expected to testify that Spector was not standing close enough to Ms Clarkson to have shot her.
Judge Fidler on Wednesday called Dr Lee a "world-renowned expert" but said, "I have to choose between the two, and Ms Caplan is more credible than Dr Lee". He ruled that "Dr Lee did recover an item that was flat, white and irregular around the edges".
The judge said he could not say whether the item was a fingernail, but he ruled that jurors could be told about the missing item. They could then decide for themselves what it might have been and whether Dr Lee hid it from prosecutors.
The jury would also be told not to hold the infraction against Spector because there was no evidence that he knew about the breach, which was committed by his former defence team.
An assistant to Dr Lee, Valerie Shook, said in an e-mail that Dr Lee was out of the country and unavailable for comment.
Ms Caplan said she saw Dr Lee pick up a fingernail-sized object and put it in a vial. She repeated her testimony on the stand on Wednesday. Dr Lee said in court last week that Ms Caplan might have seen him putting a cotton swab into a vial, and that he did not pick up a flat, white object. A photograph he took at the crime scene showing an apparent white object on a wooden stair did not depict such an item but a cut in the wood, he said.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Alan Jackson projected a magnified shot of the white image in Dr Lee's photograph, saying it clearly was not a cut.
Mr Dixon said he could not truly measure how the object he believed to be a fingernail would have helped prove their case.
Formerly Connecticut's chief criminalist, Dr Lee's fame as an expert witness took off after the 1995 OJ Simpson murder trial.
Dr Lee's questioning of the Los Angeles Police Department's handling of blood samples in that case was cited by jurors as a key factor in their decision to acquit Simpson of the murder of his ex-wife and a friend. He has become a popular lecturer and an expert in high-profile cases.