Banned_n_austin
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Guilty or innocent. . .
My mind is made up already
.MARCH 1--TSG continues with our dispatches from the Santa Maria courthouse, so check back regularly for the most up-to-date accounts of arguments delivered by Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon and Jackson lawyer Thomas Mesereau. Today, Mesereau resumes his opening statement.
8:35 AM PST: Resuming his opening statement, Mesereau came out blasting this morning, aiming his fire at the accuser and his siblings, saying that while the children were initially well behaved, they became "out of control" while in residence at Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Mesereau told jurors that they:
* Broke into the estate's wine cellar
* Broke into a refrigerator
* Stole alcohol that Jackson had ordered for guests (and were found drunk by ranch employees)
* At Neverland's amusement park, they were discovered at the top of a ferris wheel, where they threw objects at elephants and people
Addressing the stash of porno magazines discovered in his home during a November 2003 raid, Mesereau said, "Mr. Jackson will freely admit that he does read girly magazines from time to time." But, Mesereau added, Jackson kept titles like Playboy and Hustler in a briefcase. When the accuser and his brother removed magazines from the briefcase, Mesereau said, Jackson took them back from the boys (this would seem to serve as the defense explanation for why the fingerprints of Jackson and the boys were recovered from the magazines). He also noted that forensic investigators did not discover the accuser's DNA in Jackson's bedroom, where multiple acts of molestation allegedly occurred.
Continuing his attack on the accuser's mother, Mesereau said that the woman deposited illegally obtained welfare checks into the account of her boyfriend, an Army Reserves major who earned $8000-a-month. He also said that the woman had numerous chances to alert law enforcement authorities that her family was being held against its will at Jackson's estate...but she never said a thing. And as for prosecution claims that the family has never considered filing a lawsuit against Jackson, Mesereau pointed out that the mother, in conversations with law enforcement officials, mentioned that her children would have until they were 18 to file a civil claim against the performer (while the woman's daughter is 18, the accuser is 15 and his brother is 14).
Countering Sneddon's claim that the woman was not seeking money from Jackson, Mesereau said that he will prove that her lawyer, Larry Feldman, told CNN's Larry King (during a lunch) that "she wants money." He also told jurors that Jackson's doctor (apparently Alimorad Farshchian) would rebut prosecution witness claims that Jackson served alcohol to the teenage accuser on a February 2003 flight from Miami to Santa Barbara.
Mesereau may also have signaled plans to have his client testify by remarking to jurors that, "Michael Jackson will tell you" that he eventually became suspicious of the family. Mesereau noted that the performer was particularly put off once when the accuser's mother grabbed his hand and asked her children to kneel down and pray with "Daddy Michael."
Jackson, Mesereau said, was "sucked in" by the accuser and his family, and paid the price when he declined to underwrite them: "Look what happens when you don't take responsibility for this family for the rest of your life." Mesereau concluded by saying that jurors would hear a lot of testimony during a lengthy trial, but would come to the determination that Jackson is "absolutely not guilty of any of this."
9:43 AM: Meserau's opening concludes and the court takes a brief recess. When court resumes, journalist Martin Bashir will be called as the prosecution's first witness.
February 28...
9:12 AM PST: "On February the 3rd of 2003, Michael Jackson's, the defendant in this case, world was rocked. And it didn't rock in a musical sense. It rocked in a real life sense," District Attorney Tom Sneddon told Santa Barbara jurors this morning. On that date, Sneddon explained, Martin Bashir's documentary "Living with Michael Jackson" aired in England, immediately creating a firestorm over the pop singer's admission that he shared his bed with boys to whom he was unrelated. Jackson's world was so rocked, Sneddon reported, that an associate, Marc Schaffel, described the fallout from the Bashir production as a "train wreck."
At this point, Sneddon noted that some might be surprised that the defendant was "heavily in debt." An objection from Jackson lawyer Thomas Mesereau was sustained by Judge Rodney Melville, despite Sneddon's contention that the motive for the alleged conspiracy revolved around Jackson's possible financial peril.
9:28 AM PST: The case against Jackson, Sneddon said, is "about the manipulation of the young boy's adolescence through exposing him to strange sexual behavior and introducing him to sexually graphic adult magazines." The child, a 13-year-old cancer survivor, was exploited, in part, because he was estranged from his father. Sneddon noted that Jackson was a man who had a "long-standing custom and habit of sharing his bedroom, and his bed, with young boys." Sneddon also noted that the singer had the teenage accuser refer to him as "Daddy."
In the wake of the Bashir broadcast, Sneddon told jurors, the accuser and his family were viewed as a "loose end" that needed to be contained and isolated by the Jackson camp, which was, in early-February 2003, planning a "rebuttal" video to "Living with Michael Jackson." In a bid to secure an interview with the family for the rebuttal program, Jackson and his aides used "logic, reason, and appeals to trust," but when those approaches failed, they got their interview "through extortion."
9:45 AM PST: After his opening remarks, Sneddon fell into a familiar recitation of the case against Jackson, which he said began in 2000 when the accuser, then 10, was living in a studio apartment in Los Angeles. It was then that the child was diagnosed with cancer and underwent operations to remove a 16-pound tumor, lesions from his lung, and a kidney. While doctors told his family to prepare for a funeral, Sneddon noted, the child is a "fighter" who survived cancer. Now 15, he is a high school freshman, who plays on his school's football team and participates in a Navy-sponsored youth program.
The youth's cancer diagnosis, Sneddon reported, led to his introduction to Jamie Masada, owner of L.A.'s Laugh Factory. As a "last wish," Masada arranged for the boy to speak with comedians Chris Tucker and Adam Sandler. And with Jackson, who invited the child and his family to his Neverland Ranch. The boy's first visit to the 2800-acre estate came while he was in recovery (Jackson dispatched a limousine to the family's home for the three-hour trip to Neverland).
During that first stay, Sneddon said, Jackson pulled the boy aside at one point and asked him to ask his parents if he could stay with the performer, then 43, in his bedroom. The parents agreed and the child and his younger brother bunked that night with Jackson, (the boys slept on Jackson's bed while the performer slept on the floor). It was during the brothers's first Neverland stay that Jackson and aide Frank Cascio showed the boys pornographic web sites on a laptop computer in Jackson's bedroom. As they looked at photos of topless women, Jackson remarked "Got Milk?" at one point, Sneddon said. The singer even directed a lurid comment at his three-year-old son, who was sleeping on the bed. "Prince," he said to the boy, "you're missing a lot of *****."
From that point, Sneddon noted, the accuser "became one of those boys that shared Michael Jackson's bed." The prosecutor added that "the private world of Michael Jackson is quite different" from the public perception. When the star entertained children at his home, the minors visited porn sites with Jackson and viewed sexually explicit magazines like "Barely Legal" and "many others with far more offensive covers and cover titles."
9:55 AM PST: Segueing into a section of his opening dealing with alcohol, Sneddon painted a dark picture of what boys encountered at Jackson's home: "You see, the private world of Michael Jackson reveals that instead of cookies and instead of milk, you can substitute wine, vodka, and bourbon." While the entertainer claims not to drink, Sneddon said, witnesses will dispute that contention. In fact, he added, Jackson encouraged children to imbibe, and personally served them alcohol at times.
To support these alcohol claims, Sneddon said prosecutors will present testimony from flight attendants who served Jackson alcohol concealed in Diet Coke cans. Jurors will also hear from ex-bodyguard Christopher Carter, who will testify that he once saw the accuser drunk at Neverland, and former house manager Jesus Salas, who told investigators that he once brought booze to Jackson and several young children. And when Salas arrived in Jackson's bedroom, Sneddon noted, "he saw the defendant and three children sitting on the bed. And when he came back the next morning to clean out the bedroom, both bottles were empty, and the glasses had been used."
A peek into Jackson's world, Sneddon said, reveals that it is not a Peter Pan existence, but rather one filled with sexually explicit magazines and frequent talk with boys about masturbation, which the singer emphasizes is "normal." These acts, Sneddon said, were "calculated to desensitize the boy, to change his moral antenna, and to add the trust and the admiration of an adult voice to the boy's conduct to convince him that what was being done was all right in the adult world. And it worked."
10:02 AM PST: Moving into a description of Jackson's estate, Sneddon described it as a place that has been "used for beautiful causes. For the children, the underprivileged children, for the children who have been suffering, who have been brought there to share a day or a weekend on the ranch. It's something very good." The prosecutor added, however, "But just like so many things in life, something very good can end up being, on another occasion, in another setting, something very bad." Sneddon told jurors that they would get a good sense of Neverland through videos shot at the sprawling property. He described the estate as a children's wonderland, with its amusement park, zoo, and go-cart track. He also told of a secret wine cellar--the entrance to which is hidden behind a jukebox in the arcade building--where Jackson's "special guests" were poured alcohol by the entertainer himself.
Sneddon's tour of the property stopped into Jackson's office and bedroom, where, he said, investigators found pornographic magazines and DVDs during the execution of a November 18, 2003 search warrant. Fifteen sexually explicit magazines were found "laying by the tub" in Jackson's private bathroom. A briefcase also contained porno mags. And raiders, Sneddon noted, also found porn in a nightstand, which also contained cards and letters from the accuser and his family (some missives were addressed to "Daddy Michael").
10:22 AM PST: Testimony from two former Jackson employees--Salas and maid Blanca Francia--will show that Jackson, Sneddon told jurors, was "pathological" about not allowing anyone in his Neverland bedroom without his permission. Because, he said, "it is in this room and on that bed" that Jackson "opened up his Samsonite briefcase and displayed to the boys numerous sexually explicit magazines." While in his bedroom with the accuser, Sneddon said, Jackson simulated sexual intercourse with a mannequin and once walked in naked while the child and his brother watched a movie. And, Sneddon said, "It's in this room and on that bed that [the accuser] was molested by the defendant. And it's in this room and on that bed that [the accuser's brother] saw his brother molested on two separate occasions."
Returning to the pornographic magazines seized by investigators Steve Robel and Paul Zelis, Sneddon told jurors that latent fingerprints from both boys were lifted from the titles, one of which also carried Jackson's fingerprints. Jackson used the magazines, Sneddon told jurors, to "stimulate" the accuser's "emerging sexuality."
10:40 AM PST: Turning to the alleged victim's brother, who is seen on the Bashir video as a chubby-faced 12-year-old, Sneddon said that jurors will hear testimony from a 225-pound 14-year-old who plays center on his school's freshman football team. The child will testify that, on two occasions, he saw his brother being molested by Jackson while the child lay unconscious on the singer's bed. The child was "frozen by what he saw" from the staircase leading to Jackson's bedroom, and did not mention the incidents until months later when he was interviewed by psychologist Stanley Katz. The boy will testify that he saw empty wine bottles on Jackson's nightstand during the alleged molestations, said Sneddon.
Referring to the accuser's mother, Sneddon said that the woman hired a lawyer in the wake of the Bashir broadcast not because she was upset with Jackson, but because Bashir had not obtained releases to include her children in his documentary. Sneddon said that the woman has never considered filing a lawsuit against the performer. As for the accuser himself, Sneddon noted that the child will describe with "vivid particularity" how Jackson sexually assaulted him.
10:55 AM PST: Moving into a further description of Jackson's alleged coconspirators--Schaffel; Cascio; Ronald Konitzer; Dieter Wiesner; and Vincent Amen--Sneddon referred to the 28 separate overt acts that comprise the felony conspiracy charge leveled against Jackson (each of the coconspirators is mentioned in multiple overt acts). The "central focus" of the alleged plot, said Sneddon, was to isolate the family and get them to agree to appear in the Jackson camp's rebuttal video, which was to be broadcast on Fox.
Hired days after the February 6, 2003 U.S. broadcast of Martin Bashir's "Living with Michael Jackson" documentary, Ann Gabriel briefly handled crisis management and public relations chores for the entertainer. She was hired by David LeGrand, a Las Vegas attorney who began representing Jackson in January 2003.
11:15 AM PST: One of the first witnesses jurors will hear from, Sneddon said, was Ann Gabriel, who was hired by a Jackson lawyer to handle crisis management chores in the wake of the Bashir broadcast. Gabriel will testify about the Jackson organization's strategy to contain fallout from the program and how the singer himself was intimately involved in decision making.
Jackson's agreement to do interviews with Bashir was based on his belief that the resulting documentary would help jumpstart his stalled career, Sneddon said. And that is what led the singer to contact the accuser after having had nothing to do with the boy for about a year. Jackson told the child to go before Bashir's camera and tell the journalist of the star's crucial role in helping him recover from cancer. But, Sneddon noted, that plan backfired when viewers saw the finished Bashir product, with its scenes of the child holding Jackson's hand and resting his head on the performer's shoulder.
Even before the Bashir program aired in England, Sneddon said, Jackson aides were panicked. Because, he told jurors, Schaffel--though his media contacts--had obtained a transcript of the program. They realized, Sneddon said, the documentary "was clearly a boomerang on a comeback attempt."
11:28 AM PST: Speaking to jurors from a podium, Sneddon said that when the documentary aired in England on February 3, 2003, 17 million viewers tuned in. The program, he said, held the possibility of being a "moving landslide. And if it wasn't stopped, it was going to destroy everything in its path, including Michael Jackson." And the performer will not be able to argue that Bashir somehow tricked him into making damaging statements, Sneddon said, since Jackson subsequently made similar statements about sharing his bed with boys to Ed Bradley on CBS's "60 Minutes."
Sneddon said that Gabriel, when asked to rate the trouble faced by Jackson on a scale of 1 to 10, placed it at 25. He quoted Jackson videographer Christian Robinson as describing the post-Bashir period as a "nightmare." For the accuser, Sneddon said, the feedback was particularly brutal, with classmates calling him a "faggot" and directing "rude, crude sexual remarks" at him. [The child testified in the grand jury that fellow students taunted him by saying he was "booty busted" by Jackson.]
11:41 AM PST: Placing Jackson at the center of the alleged conspiracy to falsely imprison the accuser and his family at Neverland, Sneddon said that, the day after the Bashir documentay aired in England, Jackson placed a 27-minute call to the accuser and his family, which "reasserts himself into" the family's life. Clearly referring to toll records, Sneddon said that Jackson reached the California family at 6:58 PM Pacific time. He also mentioned that a note seized from the home of Jackson's assistant, Evelyn Tavasci, showed that Jackson was seeking to contact the accuser's family at this time.
[Since Sneddon finished at about 12:30 PM--and the TSG scriveners are still trying to catch up on his opening statement, we're now going to pick up with Mesereau's opening argument]
12:36 PM PST: After noting that it was an honor to represent Jackson, Thomas Mesereau told jurors, "I'm here to tell you these charges are fictitious, they're bogus, and they never happened." He than bellowed, "These charges are fake, silly, ridiculous." After Melville sustained an objection from Sneddon, Mesereau described what he said were attempts by the accuser's mother to weasel money from several celebrities while her son was ill. The woman, Mesereau said, tried to score cash from Jay Leno, comedian George Lopez, and an actress who appeared on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."
These gambits were scams, Mesereau said. In one instance, the mother received $20,000 from comedian Louise Palanker, claiming that the funds would be used for her son's medical bills and living expenses. Instead, Mesereau said, Palanker was upset to learn that the money was used to buy "a huge TV and DVD player." The mother also approached celebrities like Mike Tyson, Jim Carrey, and Adam Sandler. But, he noted, "the best-known celebrity and the most vulnerable celebrity became their mark, Michael Jackson."
After claiming that his client has been the subject of much inaccurate reporting, Mesereau launched into a brief biographical sketch of Jackson and his creation of Neverland Ranch, a place where Jackson can enjoy the childhood spoils he never had while a young man.
12:49 PM PST: Countering Sneddon's assertion that Jackson's estate was a den of iniquity, Mesereau told jurors, "We will prove that Neverland is not a haven for criminal acts, a lure for molestation, a magnet for crime." The singer's intentions toward the teenage accuser were honorable, Mesereau said, noting that Jackson "took a lot of time away from his career to help this child and help this family", unaware that "the trap was being set" for him by the family. In describing the kind of help Jackson provided when the child was ill, Mesereau said the performer asked the boy to "envision he's playing Pac Man, and the cancer cells are being gobbled up by the good people. He had gotten that from studies of visualization techniques that were perfected in England years ago for cancer patients."
My mind is made up already
.MARCH 1--TSG continues with our dispatches from the Santa Maria courthouse, so check back regularly for the most up-to-date accounts of arguments delivered by Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon and Jackson lawyer Thomas Mesereau. Today, Mesereau resumes his opening statement.
8:35 AM PST: Resuming his opening statement, Mesereau came out blasting this morning, aiming his fire at the accuser and his siblings, saying that while the children were initially well behaved, they became "out of control" while in residence at Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Mesereau told jurors that they:
* Broke into the estate's wine cellar
* Broke into a refrigerator
* Stole alcohol that Jackson had ordered for guests (and were found drunk by ranch employees)
* At Neverland's amusement park, they were discovered at the top of a ferris wheel, where they threw objects at elephants and people
Addressing the stash of porno magazines discovered in his home during a November 2003 raid, Mesereau said, "Mr. Jackson will freely admit that he does read girly magazines from time to time." But, Mesereau added, Jackson kept titles like Playboy and Hustler in a briefcase. When the accuser and his brother removed magazines from the briefcase, Mesereau said, Jackson took them back from the boys (this would seem to serve as the defense explanation for why the fingerprints of Jackson and the boys were recovered from the magazines). He also noted that forensic investigators did not discover the accuser's DNA in Jackson's bedroom, where multiple acts of molestation allegedly occurred.
Continuing his attack on the accuser's mother, Mesereau said that the woman deposited illegally obtained welfare checks into the account of her boyfriend, an Army Reserves major who earned $8000-a-month. He also said that the woman had numerous chances to alert law enforcement authorities that her family was being held against its will at Jackson's estate...but she never said a thing. And as for prosecution claims that the family has never considered filing a lawsuit against Jackson, Mesereau pointed out that the mother, in conversations with law enforcement officials, mentioned that her children would have until they were 18 to file a civil claim against the performer (while the woman's daughter is 18, the accuser is 15 and his brother is 14).
Countering Sneddon's claim that the woman was not seeking money from Jackson, Mesereau said that he will prove that her lawyer, Larry Feldman, told CNN's Larry King (during a lunch) that "she wants money." He also told jurors that Jackson's doctor (apparently Alimorad Farshchian) would rebut prosecution witness claims that Jackson served alcohol to the teenage accuser on a February 2003 flight from Miami to Santa Barbara.
Mesereau may also have signaled plans to have his client testify by remarking to jurors that, "Michael Jackson will tell you" that he eventually became suspicious of the family. Mesereau noted that the performer was particularly put off once when the accuser's mother grabbed his hand and asked her children to kneel down and pray with "Daddy Michael."
Jackson, Mesereau said, was "sucked in" by the accuser and his family, and paid the price when he declined to underwrite them: "Look what happens when you don't take responsibility for this family for the rest of your life." Mesereau concluded by saying that jurors would hear a lot of testimony during a lengthy trial, but would come to the determination that Jackson is "absolutely not guilty of any of this."
9:43 AM: Meserau's opening concludes and the court takes a brief recess. When court resumes, journalist Martin Bashir will be called as the prosecution's first witness.
February 28...
9:12 AM PST: "On February the 3rd of 2003, Michael Jackson's, the defendant in this case, world was rocked. And it didn't rock in a musical sense. It rocked in a real life sense," District Attorney Tom Sneddon told Santa Barbara jurors this morning. On that date, Sneddon explained, Martin Bashir's documentary "Living with Michael Jackson" aired in England, immediately creating a firestorm over the pop singer's admission that he shared his bed with boys to whom he was unrelated. Jackson's world was so rocked, Sneddon reported, that an associate, Marc Schaffel, described the fallout from the Bashir production as a "train wreck."
At this point, Sneddon noted that some might be surprised that the defendant was "heavily in debt." An objection from Jackson lawyer Thomas Mesereau was sustained by Judge Rodney Melville, despite Sneddon's contention that the motive for the alleged conspiracy revolved around Jackson's possible financial peril.
9:28 AM PST: The case against Jackson, Sneddon said, is "about the manipulation of the young boy's adolescence through exposing him to strange sexual behavior and introducing him to sexually graphic adult magazines." The child, a 13-year-old cancer survivor, was exploited, in part, because he was estranged from his father. Sneddon noted that Jackson was a man who had a "long-standing custom and habit of sharing his bedroom, and his bed, with young boys." Sneddon also noted that the singer had the teenage accuser refer to him as "Daddy."
In the wake of the Bashir broadcast, Sneddon told jurors, the accuser and his family were viewed as a "loose end" that needed to be contained and isolated by the Jackson camp, which was, in early-February 2003, planning a "rebuttal" video to "Living with Michael Jackson." In a bid to secure an interview with the family for the rebuttal program, Jackson and his aides used "logic, reason, and appeals to trust," but when those approaches failed, they got their interview "through extortion."
9:45 AM PST: After his opening remarks, Sneddon fell into a familiar recitation of the case against Jackson, which he said began in 2000 when the accuser, then 10, was living in a studio apartment in Los Angeles. It was then that the child was diagnosed with cancer and underwent operations to remove a 16-pound tumor, lesions from his lung, and a kidney. While doctors told his family to prepare for a funeral, Sneddon noted, the child is a "fighter" who survived cancer. Now 15, he is a high school freshman, who plays on his school's football team and participates in a Navy-sponsored youth program.
The youth's cancer diagnosis, Sneddon reported, led to his introduction to Jamie Masada, owner of L.A.'s Laugh Factory. As a "last wish," Masada arranged for the boy to speak with comedians Chris Tucker and Adam Sandler. And with Jackson, who invited the child and his family to his Neverland Ranch. The boy's first visit to the 2800-acre estate came while he was in recovery (Jackson dispatched a limousine to the family's home for the three-hour trip to Neverland).
During that first stay, Sneddon said, Jackson pulled the boy aside at one point and asked him to ask his parents if he could stay with the performer, then 43, in his bedroom. The parents agreed and the child and his younger brother bunked that night with Jackson, (the boys slept on Jackson's bed while the performer slept on the floor). It was during the brothers's first Neverland stay that Jackson and aide Frank Cascio showed the boys pornographic web sites on a laptop computer in Jackson's bedroom. As they looked at photos of topless women, Jackson remarked "Got Milk?" at one point, Sneddon said. The singer even directed a lurid comment at his three-year-old son, who was sleeping on the bed. "Prince," he said to the boy, "you're missing a lot of *****."
From that point, Sneddon noted, the accuser "became one of those boys that shared Michael Jackson's bed." The prosecutor added that "the private world of Michael Jackson is quite different" from the public perception. When the star entertained children at his home, the minors visited porn sites with Jackson and viewed sexually explicit magazines like "Barely Legal" and "many others with far more offensive covers and cover titles."
9:55 AM PST: Segueing into a section of his opening dealing with alcohol, Sneddon painted a dark picture of what boys encountered at Jackson's home: "You see, the private world of Michael Jackson reveals that instead of cookies and instead of milk, you can substitute wine, vodka, and bourbon." While the entertainer claims not to drink, Sneddon said, witnesses will dispute that contention. In fact, he added, Jackson encouraged children to imbibe, and personally served them alcohol at times.
To support these alcohol claims, Sneddon said prosecutors will present testimony from flight attendants who served Jackson alcohol concealed in Diet Coke cans. Jurors will also hear from ex-bodyguard Christopher Carter, who will testify that he once saw the accuser drunk at Neverland, and former house manager Jesus Salas, who told investigators that he once brought booze to Jackson and several young children. And when Salas arrived in Jackson's bedroom, Sneddon noted, "he saw the defendant and three children sitting on the bed. And when he came back the next morning to clean out the bedroom, both bottles were empty, and the glasses had been used."
A peek into Jackson's world, Sneddon said, reveals that it is not a Peter Pan existence, but rather one filled with sexually explicit magazines and frequent talk with boys about masturbation, which the singer emphasizes is "normal." These acts, Sneddon said, were "calculated to desensitize the boy, to change his moral antenna, and to add the trust and the admiration of an adult voice to the boy's conduct to convince him that what was being done was all right in the adult world. And it worked."
10:02 AM PST: Moving into a description of Jackson's estate, Sneddon described it as a place that has been "used for beautiful causes. For the children, the underprivileged children, for the children who have been suffering, who have been brought there to share a day or a weekend on the ranch. It's something very good." The prosecutor added, however, "But just like so many things in life, something very good can end up being, on another occasion, in another setting, something very bad." Sneddon told jurors that they would get a good sense of Neverland through videos shot at the sprawling property. He described the estate as a children's wonderland, with its amusement park, zoo, and go-cart track. He also told of a secret wine cellar--the entrance to which is hidden behind a jukebox in the arcade building--where Jackson's "special guests" were poured alcohol by the entertainer himself.
Sneddon's tour of the property stopped into Jackson's office and bedroom, where, he said, investigators found pornographic magazines and DVDs during the execution of a November 18, 2003 search warrant. Fifteen sexually explicit magazines were found "laying by the tub" in Jackson's private bathroom. A briefcase also contained porno mags. And raiders, Sneddon noted, also found porn in a nightstand, which also contained cards and letters from the accuser and his family (some missives were addressed to "Daddy Michael").
10:22 AM PST: Testimony from two former Jackson employees--Salas and maid Blanca Francia--will show that Jackson, Sneddon told jurors, was "pathological" about not allowing anyone in his Neverland bedroom without his permission. Because, he said, "it is in this room and on that bed" that Jackson "opened up his Samsonite briefcase and displayed to the boys numerous sexually explicit magazines." While in his bedroom with the accuser, Sneddon said, Jackson simulated sexual intercourse with a mannequin and once walked in naked while the child and his brother watched a movie. And, Sneddon said, "It's in this room and on that bed that [the accuser] was molested by the defendant. And it's in this room and on that bed that [the accuser's brother] saw his brother molested on two separate occasions."
Returning to the pornographic magazines seized by investigators Steve Robel and Paul Zelis, Sneddon told jurors that latent fingerprints from both boys were lifted from the titles, one of which also carried Jackson's fingerprints. Jackson used the magazines, Sneddon told jurors, to "stimulate" the accuser's "emerging sexuality."
10:40 AM PST: Turning to the alleged victim's brother, who is seen on the Bashir video as a chubby-faced 12-year-old, Sneddon said that jurors will hear testimony from a 225-pound 14-year-old who plays center on his school's freshman football team. The child will testify that, on two occasions, he saw his brother being molested by Jackson while the child lay unconscious on the singer's bed. The child was "frozen by what he saw" from the staircase leading to Jackson's bedroom, and did not mention the incidents until months later when he was interviewed by psychologist Stanley Katz. The boy will testify that he saw empty wine bottles on Jackson's nightstand during the alleged molestations, said Sneddon.
Referring to the accuser's mother, Sneddon said that the woman hired a lawyer in the wake of the Bashir broadcast not because she was upset with Jackson, but because Bashir had not obtained releases to include her children in his documentary. Sneddon said that the woman has never considered filing a lawsuit against the performer. As for the accuser himself, Sneddon noted that the child will describe with "vivid particularity" how Jackson sexually assaulted him.
10:55 AM PST: Moving into a further description of Jackson's alleged coconspirators--Schaffel; Cascio; Ronald Konitzer; Dieter Wiesner; and Vincent Amen--Sneddon referred to the 28 separate overt acts that comprise the felony conspiracy charge leveled against Jackson (each of the coconspirators is mentioned in multiple overt acts). The "central focus" of the alleged plot, said Sneddon, was to isolate the family and get them to agree to appear in the Jackson camp's rebuttal video, which was to be broadcast on Fox.
Hired days after the February 6, 2003 U.S. broadcast of Martin Bashir's "Living with Michael Jackson" documentary, Ann Gabriel briefly handled crisis management and public relations chores for the entertainer. She was hired by David LeGrand, a Las Vegas attorney who began representing Jackson in January 2003.
11:15 AM PST: One of the first witnesses jurors will hear from, Sneddon said, was Ann Gabriel, who was hired by a Jackson lawyer to handle crisis management chores in the wake of the Bashir broadcast. Gabriel will testify about the Jackson organization's strategy to contain fallout from the program and how the singer himself was intimately involved in decision making.
Jackson's agreement to do interviews with Bashir was based on his belief that the resulting documentary would help jumpstart his stalled career, Sneddon said. And that is what led the singer to contact the accuser after having had nothing to do with the boy for about a year. Jackson told the child to go before Bashir's camera and tell the journalist of the star's crucial role in helping him recover from cancer. But, Sneddon noted, that plan backfired when viewers saw the finished Bashir product, with its scenes of the child holding Jackson's hand and resting his head on the performer's shoulder.
Even before the Bashir program aired in England, Sneddon said, Jackson aides were panicked. Because, he told jurors, Schaffel--though his media contacts--had obtained a transcript of the program. They realized, Sneddon said, the documentary "was clearly a boomerang on a comeback attempt."
11:28 AM PST: Speaking to jurors from a podium, Sneddon said that when the documentary aired in England on February 3, 2003, 17 million viewers tuned in. The program, he said, held the possibility of being a "moving landslide. And if it wasn't stopped, it was going to destroy everything in its path, including Michael Jackson." And the performer will not be able to argue that Bashir somehow tricked him into making damaging statements, Sneddon said, since Jackson subsequently made similar statements about sharing his bed with boys to Ed Bradley on CBS's "60 Minutes."
Sneddon said that Gabriel, when asked to rate the trouble faced by Jackson on a scale of 1 to 10, placed it at 25. He quoted Jackson videographer Christian Robinson as describing the post-Bashir period as a "nightmare." For the accuser, Sneddon said, the feedback was particularly brutal, with classmates calling him a "faggot" and directing "rude, crude sexual remarks" at him. [The child testified in the grand jury that fellow students taunted him by saying he was "booty busted" by Jackson.]
11:41 AM PST: Placing Jackson at the center of the alleged conspiracy to falsely imprison the accuser and his family at Neverland, Sneddon said that, the day after the Bashir documentay aired in England, Jackson placed a 27-minute call to the accuser and his family, which "reasserts himself into" the family's life. Clearly referring to toll records, Sneddon said that Jackson reached the California family at 6:58 PM Pacific time. He also mentioned that a note seized from the home of Jackson's assistant, Evelyn Tavasci, showed that Jackson was seeking to contact the accuser's family at this time.
[Since Sneddon finished at about 12:30 PM--and the TSG scriveners are still trying to catch up on his opening statement, we're now going to pick up with Mesereau's opening argument]
12:36 PM PST: After noting that it was an honor to represent Jackson, Thomas Mesereau told jurors, "I'm here to tell you these charges are fictitious, they're bogus, and they never happened." He than bellowed, "These charges are fake, silly, ridiculous." After Melville sustained an objection from Sneddon, Mesereau described what he said were attempts by the accuser's mother to weasel money from several celebrities while her son was ill. The woman, Mesereau said, tried to score cash from Jay Leno, comedian George Lopez, and an actress who appeared on "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air."
These gambits were scams, Mesereau said. In one instance, the mother received $20,000 from comedian Louise Palanker, claiming that the funds would be used for her son's medical bills and living expenses. Instead, Mesereau said, Palanker was upset to learn that the money was used to buy "a huge TV and DVD player." The mother also approached celebrities like Mike Tyson, Jim Carrey, and Adam Sandler. But, he noted, "the best-known celebrity and the most vulnerable celebrity became their mark, Michael Jackson."
After claiming that his client has been the subject of much inaccurate reporting, Mesereau launched into a brief biographical sketch of Jackson and his creation of Neverland Ranch, a place where Jackson can enjoy the childhood spoils he never had while a young man.
12:49 PM PST: Countering Sneddon's assertion that Jackson's estate was a den of iniquity, Mesereau told jurors, "We will prove that Neverland is not a haven for criminal acts, a lure for molestation, a magnet for crime." The singer's intentions toward the teenage accuser were honorable, Mesereau said, noting that Jackson "took a lot of time away from his career to help this child and help this family", unaware that "the trap was being set" for him by the family. In describing the kind of help Jackson provided when the child was ill, Mesereau said the performer asked the boy to "envision he's playing Pac Man, and the cancer cells are being gobbled up by the good people. He had gotten that from studies of visualization techniques that were perfected in England years ago for cancer patients."
