The second murder trial of Phil Spector, the deeply eccentric music producer, began today in a Los Angeles courtroom, following the hung-jury verdict that left city prosecutors seething when his case originally came to court last year.

Once again, jurors will be asked to examine the life of Lana Clarkson, a B-movie actress turned cocktail waitress, who was found with a fatal gunshot wound to her mouth at Mr Spector’s “castle” in the wealthy LA suburb of Alhambra.

Mr Spector — credited with inventing the “Wall of Sound” recording technique in the 1960s — had picked up Ms Clarkson only hours earlier from the House of Blues, the bar, restaurant and music venue where she worked on LA’s neon-lit Sunset Strip.

The shooting took place in the weeks before the Iraq War in 2003. Mr Spector was 63 at the time.

Jurors will again have to decide if the allegedly depressive 40-year-old blonde committed suicide — if she “kissed the gun”, as Mr Spector memorably put it to Esquire magazine — or if she was the victim of the producer’s alleged drunken gun-play.

In a speech reminiscent of the one he gave at the first trial, Alan Jackson, a prosecutor, briefly described the killing of Ms Clarkson and displayed photos showing her in life and death.One image showed her body slumped in a chair with blood all over her face. He portrayed Mr Spector as a genious who repeatedly threatened women with guns and was prone to becoming "very sinister, very violent and very deadly" when drunk.

Doron Weinberg, a defence lawyer, retorted: "This is turning into the trial of [Spector's] character, which the court knows is clearly unconstitutional and impermissible."

Mr Spector, who released a single in 1962 entitled He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss), was known for his erratic behaviour for decades before the actress’s death. It was part of rock’n’roll folklore — or myth — that Mr Spector had once pointed a gun at Dee Dee Ramone, the bass player of The Ramones, in an effort to get him to record a successful take. And his ex-wife, Veronica “Ronnie” Bennett, the former lead singer of the Ronettes, once claimed that Mr Spector had threatened to bury her alive in a glass coffin if she ever slept with Keith Richards.

She said that Mr Spector showed her the coffin after trapping her inside their home.

In the original murder trial, the jury deadlocked 10-to-2, with the vast majority favouring conviction.

But prosecutors feel they can clinch a conviction on the same second-degree murder charge this time. Mr Spector is hoping for an acquittal. Opening statements were expected yesterday, and both sides were predicting a trial that would last only two or three months — half the length of the original one, which involved 77 witnesses and 600 pieces of meticulously catalogued evidence from the crime scene.

In the first trial, Mr Spector’s defence team argued that Ms Clarkson was so distraught over her failing screen career — the nearest she came to fame was an appearance in the 1985 B-movie Barbarian Queen — that she had chosen to end her life. The prosecution gave a different account, saying that Mr Spector had shot her after she resisted his advances. There were no witnesses to the shooting, and Mr Spector never testified.

Witnesses at the new trial are likely to once again include Mr Spector’s driver.

He is expected to tell the jury that he heard a shot while sitting in his car outside the producer’s castle. The driver is also likely to repeat his claim that he saw his boss emerge with a gun from a doorway, and say, “I think I killed somebody”. The defence is certain to point out the driver’s poor grasp of English: when he first reported the shooting, the police operator thought he was talking about a “Seal Inspector”, not Phil Spector.

Five women from Mr Spector’s colourful past are due to testify, including one who may be brought back from the dead via video recordings of her testimony at the first trial. Diane Ogden died a few months after the trial ended.

But the drama of the first trial, when witnesses’ stories were new and memories were fresher, will be muted — in spite of Mr Spector’s elaborate long-coated suits, silk ties, hairpieces, and his 28-year-old wife, Rachelle, a former Playboy model.

“The facts don’t change,” said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the LA district attorney. “The evidence we’ll be presenting is the same evidence as the first trial. We feel that we have a very strong case.”

Alan Jackson remains the city’s lead prosecutor, but Mr Spector’s large and often dysfunctional legal team from the first trial has been replaced by a veteran lawyer from San Francisco, Doron Weinberg.

“We intend to rely on the same basic evidence,” he said, adding that the central theory of the defence would remain that “she (Ms Clarkson) fired the fatal shot.”

During the jury selection process, only a few potential jurors remembered Mr Spector’s heyday as the producer of teenage anthems such as To Know Him is to Love Him, Be My Baby, and the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’.

Mr Spector also produced Ike and Tina Turner’s River Deep-Mountain High, and worked on the Beatles album Let It Be.

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