Lawyers To Outline Their Cases In Michael Jackson Trial
Posted by admin on 28th February 2005
SANTA MARIA, California : After 15 months of accusations and denial over Michael Jackson’s alleged molestation of a 13-year-old boy, lawyers will finally get their chance to lay out their cases before a jury.
For Jackson, 46, the stakes could hardly be higher.
With his career already in decline, the singer now faces the possibility of spending the next 20 years behind bars.
His fate will, in large part, depend on the performance and credibility of the testimony given by the boy, now 15, and his family.
Jackson has strenuously denied all the 10 charges against him, including those of plying the boy with alcohol and holding his family at his Neverland Ranch against their will.
In opening arguments on Monday, the prosecution is expected to portray Jackson as a scheming predator who used his celebrity to take advantage of a child he had taken into his home as a cancer victim.
The high-profile defence team, meanwhile, intends to paint the accuser’s family, particularly his mother, as money-grubbing opportunists with a history of making unfounded molestation allegations.
The final judgement on Jackson’s guilt or innocence lies with four men and eight women, ranging in age from 20 to 79, who were selected last week to serve on the jury — since dubbed the “Jackson 12.”
While technically a jury of Jackson’s peers, the panel, whose racial profile is white and Hispanic, is notable for the absence of a single African American juror.
While Jackson’s celebrity alone is enough to ensure blanket media coverage, further star-wattage will be added to the proceedings by a witness list that includes the likes of Smokey Robinson, Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Taylor and Stevie Wonder.
Once the opening arguments have been completed, the lead witness for the prosecution will be Martin Bashir, the British journalist responsible for the documentary “Living with Michael Jackson” that was broadcast in February 2003.
The prosecution will almost certainly play the jury excerpts from the documentary, which showed Jackson holding hands with his now accuser and admitting that he often shared his bedroom with children.
Jackson has labelled all the allegations a “big lie” invented by the accuser’s greed-driven family in order to extort money.
The singer has also accused the prosecutor who brought the case, Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon, of waging a personal vendetta against him.
Sneddon unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Jackson over allegations he molested another boy in 1993.
The case collapsed when Jackson struck an out-of-court deal under which the youngster dropped the charges in return for a settlement worth more than 23 million dollars.
Judge Rodney Melville, who is presiding over the current trial, has so far deferred his ruling on the crucial question of whether he will allow the prosecution to enter details of the 1993 case as evidence.
“That could be crucial in the case,” said Loyola Marymount University law professor and former prosecutor Laurie Levinson. “If it shows a pattern as serial molester, that will be a major problem for the defence.”
Melville handed Jackson’s lawyers a significant victory last week, by allowing details of the accuser’s family’s litigation history to be presented to the jury.
The defence hopes that will bolster its contention that the mother has a record of making false accusations of sexual assault, and that she coached her children on how to back them up.
Originally helmed by the celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, Jackson’s defence team is now led by Thomas Mesereau, an attorney more noted for pro bono cases involving poor clients facing capital charges.
With Mesereau primed to throw brick-bats at the alleged victim’s mother, prosecution attorney Ron Zonen is expected to repeat the message he laid out before the judge on Friday — that the accused in the case is Jackson, not the boy’s family.
“This is about whether the man who admits to sleeping with children was sleeping with this child and what he did while sleeping with this child. That is what this case is about,” Zonen said.
– AFP
Channel News Asia
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