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Is Phil Spector Really Tweeting From Jail?

The Teddy Bears with Phil Spector (on right)

Update: The tweets are a fake, the author confesses and is going to stop.

CNET News issues a red-faced correction. [More....]

Original Post:

Phil Spector is still in the county jail, awaiting designation and transport to a state prison following his sentencing last week.

Reportedly, he's tweeting from jail. How? According to CNet's reporter, the warden allows a laptop and iPod.

However, because he is able to keep his laptop (as well as his iPod), Spector has taken to Twitter to express so many things about his time in jail, his feelings about music, and his disappearing wig. Oh, yes, and about his pet cockroach.

Anyone think it's really Phil Spector? Honestly, I can't tell. While I have no clients in jail with laptop computers, my clients all have access to jail computers to be able to review the discovery in their cases. These computers, supplied by the Court, have no internet capability. On the other hand, I had a client in 1993, from South Central LA, who was sentenced to 17 years in a crack and gun chase. He's been e-mailing me for a year or so trying to figure out if he can get the two-level crack cocaine guideline reduction implemented by the Sentencing Commission. It appears not, since he was sentenced as a career offender. But I enjoy exchanging legal updates with him and he seems to have access every day....which I suspect is in the prison library. He's been in now 14 years and never misses sending a Christmas card that always begins will well wishes for my son.

Anyway, I figure, if my client can e-mail from a federal maximum security prison, maybe it's not so crazy that a county jail inmate can tweet from a county jail. That might depend on the views of the individual warden.

So, does LA allow inmates to have laptops and/or ipod with internet access, including Tweet? Any reporters want to track it down? Phil is in the Twin Towers facility in L.A.

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  • Display: Sort:
    fake (none / 0) (#1)
    by Bemused on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 07:19:03 AM EST


    Not Phil (none / 0) (#2)
    by Romberry on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 08:26:48 AM EST
    About an hour ago:
    I have a confession to make.. watch this space for the next 5 minutes.

    Followed by:

    I am NOT Phil SPector. I made this account as a joke. Befriending a cockroach? c'mon folks... even Phil's not that crazy.

    And followed by:

    I copied many of Phil's quotes and I made up half of them. I even fooled many media outlets. It was fun but I feel it has ran it's course.


    That's a pretty funny gag (none / 0) (#3)
    by ruffian on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 10:36:35 AM EST
    Reminds me of a road trip my family happened to take at the time James Earl Ray had escaped from prison. My brother took to filling out comment cards at Denny's across the country, and signing them James Earl Ray, transient

    Regardless (none / 0) (#4)
    by SOS on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 10:42:37 AM EST
    prison is still the belly of the beast.

    well, (none / 0) (#5)
    by bocajeff on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 10:54:58 AM EST
    that's why you should refrain from murdering others...

    Parent
    Interesting video -- (none / 0) (#6)
    by brodie on Wed Jun 03, 2009 at 11:07:56 AM EST
    I never knew Spector started as a performer.  The song is a little thin and repetitive, yet not bad compared to a lot of the stupid pop tunes the 50s produced.

    And it's most unfortunate, even a bit embarrassing, that one of this country's best musical talents ever -- and the guy partly responsible for creating the song most played on radio in the 20th C -- is now officially a convicted killer.

    Given his clear weirdness to go with a peculiar track record, I wonder if his counsel ever seriously advised on the insanity defense.  Or perhaps that one doesn't wash with juries these days.