Clash of the Titans in a Santa Maria courtroom this week!

[Trauma-san]

Yesterday, and today, both sides of the Michael Jackson case laid out their opening statements, which traditionally outline the case and their respective arguments they will attempt to prove or disprove.  On the prosecutions side, you have "Mad Dog" Thomas Sneddon, the prosecutor who for 13 years has been trying to nail Michael Jackson on Child Molestation charges.  On the defense's side, you have cool, collected, clever Thomas Mesereau, one of the greatest defense lawyers in the world.  Round 1!  Watching a good court case is like watching a well-written play.

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Jackson Prosecutor Tells of Abuse and Conspiracy
By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: March 1, 2005

SANTA MARIA, Calif., Feb. 28 - The prosecution opened its case against Michael Jackson on Monday, telling a jury that he used alcohol and pornography to seduce and ultimately molest a young boy who was recovering from a life-threatening battle with cancer.

Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., the Santa Barbara County district attorney, for the first time laid out the state's charges against Mr. Jackson, who is trying to salvage his fortune and his career. In its own opening statement, the defense attacked the accuser's family, saying that, in an effort to get money from Mr. Jackson it had laid a trap for him.

Mr. Sneddon said Mr. Jackson had first shown the boy pornography when he was 10. And he described what he called an elaborate conspiracy by the defendant and several associates to convince the boy and his family that their lives were in danger and to force them to appear on camera to rebut charges raised in a 2003 documentary by the British journalist Martin Bashir. In that documentary, Mr. Jackson admitted sharing his bed with young boys and described it as an innocent and loving act. The accuser in this case appeared on the film holding hands with Mr. Jackson and leaning his head on his shoulder.

In an effort to silence the family, Mr. Jackson flew them to Florida on a private jet, gave them expensive gifts, detained them against their will at his Neverland ranch and prepared to move them to Brazil, the prosecutor said. Aides to Mr. Jackson withdrew the children from their school, telling officials that the family was moving to Arizona, Mr. Sneddon charged.

He also said that a Jackson associate had destroyed a urine sample the boy had prepared for his doctor because it would provide evidence that Mr. Jackson had given the boy alcohol as a prelude to molesting him, the prosecutor said.

The elements of the charges were contained in the 10-count indictment against Mr. Jackson, which was officially unsealed on Monday for the first time.

A conspiracy count lists five unindicted co-conspirators and 28 overt acts that the government said furthered a scheme to imprison the accuser and his family and frighten them into doing Mr. Jackson's bidding. The five Jackson employees were Frank Tyson, also known as Frank Cascio; Ronald Konitzer; Dieter Wiesner; Marc Schaffel; and Vincent Amen. Prosecutors said the group provided damage control advice, transportation, surveillance, muscle to keep the family in line and aid in producing a video intended to refute the Bashir documentary.

Mr. Sneddon presented his case in a voice oozing contempt for Mr. Jackson, who he said had used his wealth and fame to entice young boys - including the accuser in this case, who was 13 years old at the time of the alleged molestation in February and March of 2003 - into his bedroom. He described Mr. Jackson's 2,800-acre Neverland ranch near here as a place of beauty and enchantment that also served a darker purpose as, in essence, a pedophile's lair.

The prosecutor said Mr. Jackson showed the boy pornographic material on the Internet on his first visit to the ranch, three years before the molesting is said to have occurred.

Mr. Sneddon said detectives who searched the ranch in late 2003 found numerous pornographic magazines, including several that depicted models who appeared to be young teenagers and nudist magazines from the 1960's that showed naked children. He said the accuser in the case and his younger brother would testify that Mr. Jackson had showed them these magazines and spoken approvingly of masturbation, encouraging them to try it.

On two occasions, Mr. Sneddon said, the accuser's younger brother saw Mr. Jackson in bed with his brother, fondling himself and the boy at the same time. The boy appeared to be asleep or drunk, according to the younger brother's grand jury testimony.

Anticipating a defense strategy to impugn the credibility of the two boys and their mother, Mr. Sneddon acknowledged that the mother had lied under oath in a lawsuit and had fraudulently obtained welfare benefits. But he said that he would show that the mother's behavior was a response to an abusive relationship with her former husband and that her motives were to protect her children. She has not sought any money from Mr. Jackson, Mr. Sneddon said.

Mr. Sneddon's presentation took a little more than three hours, and at the end he appeared to have lost the attention of some jurors. But when Mr. Jackson's chief lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., began, the jurors sat up in their seats and followed his argument raptly.

In a dramatic staccato, Mr. Mesereau portrayed the accuser's mother as a grifter, a welfare cheat and an extortionist who had repeatedly made spurious charges of sexual abuse and false imprisonment. Mr. Mesereau said the mother had in the past tried to shake down other celebrities, including Jay Leno, Mike Tyson and Adam Sandler.

"We will prove," Mr. Mesereau said, "that the best-known celebrity, the most vulnerable celebrity became their mark: Michael Joe Jackson."

He cited a case the mother filed several years ago against J. C. Penney after she and her children were picked up on suspicion of shoplifting. She sued, claiming that J. C. Penney employees had falsely accused her and sexually groped her. In the case, Mr. Mesereau said, she coached the children to lie. The company settled the claim for $152,500, he said.

Mr. Mesereau said that the accuser's mother had not reported the alleged incidents with Mr. Jackson to the police, but rather went to a lawyer who represented a boy who had raised similar accusations more than a decade ago.

Mr. Sneddon's appearance in court on Monday was the culmination of a 12-year attempt to prosecute Mr. Jackson for alleged child molesting. Another young boy said in 1993 that Mr. Jackson had sexually fondled him on repeated occasions, but Mr. Sneddon and prosecutors in Los Angeles were unable to bring charges after the boy's family reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Mr. Jackson and dropped their complaint.

Mr. Sneddon said Mr. Jackson began a relationship with the current complainant in 2000, when the boy was 10 years old and suffering a dire case of lymphoma. Doctors removed a 16-pound tumor from his abdomen and took out his gall bladder, his lymph nodes and one of his kidneys.

In August 2000, Mr. Jackson invited the boy, his older sister, his younger brother and his mother to visit him at Neverland. He asked the mother if the boy could sleep in his bedroom. The mother agreed, Mr. Sneddon said.

The visit lasted a few days and then contact stopped between the family and Mr. Jackson. But two years later, the singer contacted them again because he wanted the boy to appear in a documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson" by Mr. Bashir, who is expected to be one of the first witnesses in this case.

The documentary was broadcast in Britain on Feb. 3, 2003, and in this country three days later. The program was a public relations disaster for Mr. Jackson Mr. Sneddon said, and set in motion the conspiracy that prosecutors described.

It was during the family's two-week stay at Neverland, while Mr. Jackson and his aides scrambled to deal with the fallout from the documentary, prosecutors said, that Mr. Jackson brought the accuser to his bed, plied him with wine and vodka, and molested him.

Mr. Mesereau said the prosecution's claims defied logic. He cited credit-card purchases of $3,300 by the accuser's mother billed to Mr. Jackson while the family was purportedly held hostage at Neverland.

The sexual abuse is alleged to have taken place when Mr. Jackson was under intense scrutiny because of the documentary by the news media, law enforcement and child welfare authorities, Mr. Mesereau noted.

"In the middle of all this is when they say the child molestation occurs," he said. "Can you imagine a more absurd time for it to happen?"

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I honestly think the case is going to fall apart about half way through, they might even end up having charges dropped against Michael before a verdict. 

[Trauma-san]

And Mesereau continued his statement today:

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SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Michael Jackson (news)'s lawyer told jurors in a powerful opening statement Tuesday that authorities found no DNA evidence in the entertainer's bedroom to support child molestation charges and had to change the dates of the alleged crimes because the accuser's story changed.

"Mr. Jackson flat-out denies these molestation allegations," Thomas Mesereau Jr. told the jury. "They are false."

When Mesereau finished, the prosecution called as its first witness British journalist Martin Bashir, who made the TV documentary "Living With Michael Jackson." In the documentary, Jackson held hands with the 13-year-old boy who eventually accused him of molestation and acknowledged sharing his bedroom with children.

District Attorney Tom Sneddon then began showing the two-hour program to the jury.

Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting the boy at his Neverland Ranch in 2003, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive. Opening statements began Monday and wrapped up Tuesday with Mesereau's presentation.

The defense lawyer hinted that Jackson might testify in his own defense, but he never expressly told the jurors that Jackson will take the stand. Jackson is not on the defense witness list.

The defense attorney reminded jurors that in detailing specific acts of alleged molestation in opening statements, the prosecutor had given them this "lurid discussion of masturbation." Among the allegations Sneddon made were that Jackson told the boy masturbation was normal, then reached into the boy's underpants and masturbated the boy and himself.

But Mesereau said no DNA from the accuser was found in Jackson's bedroom.

Mesereau accused the prosecution of changing the dates of the alleged molestation because they were in conflict with an interview between child welfare workers and the family.

He said the boy once told investigators the molestation occurred prior to the Feb. 21 interview, but at another point claimed the molestation occurred after the interview.

Mesereau also said the mother was using the criminal charges to build a civil case in order to get a payoff, and he addressed allegations that Jackson showed sexually explicit images and gave alcohol to his accuser and his brother.

Mesereau said the children were sometimes "out of control" at Neverland and read Jackson's magazines and broke into his alcohol without his permission.

"Mr. Jackson will freely admit that he does read girlie magazines from time to time," Mesereau said. "He absolutely does not show them to children."

Sneddon said Jackson gave his accuser alcohol to make him more susceptible to molestation, and explicit magazines were found with the accuser's fingerprints and that one magazine had the fingerprints of Jackson and the accuser.

Mesereau offered a possible explanation for that, saying Jackson once caught the boy reading his magazines and took them away and locked them in a briefcase.

The boys also memorized security codes and codes used to start amusement park rides at Neverland, so they had the run of the ranch when Jackson was away and could get into Jackson's bedroom without permission, Mesereau said.

At one point a ride operator found the boys at the top of a Ferris Wheel they had started, and they were throwing things at elephants in Jackson's zoo and at people, Mesereau said.


Of the alcohol allegations, Mesereau said the boys "were caught intoxicated, they were caught with bottles. Mr. Jackson was nowhere around."

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LOL @ the boys stuck on top of the ferris wheel throwing things at the elephants, LOL.