Michael Jackson News
Jackson Jourours could depend on experience with their own children
Of the prospective jurors who could decide whether Michael Jackson molested a 15-year-old boy, four in every five are parents, which could influence how they view the charges and the accuser's credibility.
The large number of parents in the Jackson jury pool could cut either way for the singer, legal analysts say. Parents with young children might be especially upset by the allegations, but they may also believe, based on their own experiences, that children can be dishonest.
"The ones with younger children may have a gut reaction that this could happen to my children, and that could make the defense very nervous," said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor.
Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau asked prospective jurors last week whether they believed young witnesses could be encouraged to lie, setting up a defense argument that the accuser's mother is pulling his strings.
Jurors' answers depended largely on their experiences as parents: Some recounted their children's elaborate explanations for missed curfews, while others said children tend to tell the truth.
"If it benefits them they might twist it a little bit," said Juror No. 80, who has two adult children.
"I was a homemaker and I spent my time teaching mine not to lie," said Juror No. 89, who has four adult children and said they were honest.
Of course, parenthood isn't the only characteristic that makes jurors more agreeable to one side or the other in jury selection. Attorneys will scrutinize every aspect of each prospect's background.
Although her faith in children's honesty might ingratiate Juror No. 89 to prosecutors, the defense might like her because she, like Jackson, is black - especially since the jury pool is mostly white and polls have found that whites are far more likely than blacks to think Jackson is guilty.
Legal analysts said parenthood will be an important factor because parental instincts are so strong. They even shine through the rigid format of juror questionnaires. One woman wrote of her 4-year-old, in response to a question about her children's occupations, "He's my baby."
Another juror expressed concern about Jackson's past behavior, which has included letting children sleep in his room.
"Having three children of my own, I am very sensitive to any type of child abuse," Juror No. 40 wrote in her questionnaire.
As attorneys try to whittle the jury pool down to 12 jurors and eight alternates, each side can challenge an unlimited number of jurors for any signs of bias and reject 10 jurors without cause. Jury selection was delayed last week when Jackson was hospitalized with the flu, but is scheduled to resume Tuesday.
Of 242 potential jurors, 189 have children. Of those, 98 jurors, or two out of five total prospects, have children under 18, according to questionnaires released to news media.
Fifteen prospective jurors have sons who are either 15, like the accuser, or 13, the accuser's age at the time of the alleged molestation.
One juror has two sons aged 13 and 15. He would likely be rejected by the defense because he would have to explain himself to the boys if he voted to acquit Jackson, Levenson said.
"That parent's going to have to answer to their child who's going to say, 'Come on Dad, how come you didn't believe the kid?'" Levenson said. "It's pressure on the homefront."
With so many parents in the jury pool, Jackson's lawyers will have to accept several on the jury, said Jean Rosenbluth, a University of Southern California law professor. That means they'll have to pick jurors who may be favorable to their client in some other way.
"Some of those folks might have had their children go to Neverland on a school trip and might have had a positive experience and a good time," Rosenbluth said. "Or they might be parents who have small children, which might not be a good thing for the defense, but they might be Michael Jackson fans or skeptical of the charges."
Twenty-nine of the 98 prospects with minor children - almost one in three - answered yes on the questionnaire when asked if they have ever known anyone who has met Jackson or been to Neverland. They were not required to elaborate, but one juror, No. 133, volunteered that her niece went on a field trip.
Jackson's lawyers can also try to connect with parents by reminding them that Jackson is a parent too. Among the hundreds of people listed as possible defense witnesses last week were Jackson's daughter Paris and son Prince Michael.
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Judge announces he has enough joururs for trial
he judge in the child molestation case against Michael Jackson said Tuesday he had a sufficient pool of about 250 prospective jurors willing to sit through the projected six-month trial, moving jury selection along more quickly than expected.
Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville said about 300 more prospective jurors who had been scheduled to report Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday would not be needed.
"I think we have enough jurors," Melville said at midday.
The next stage begins on Monday, when the prospective jurors will be individually questioned by the defence and the prosecution. The judge wants to seat a jury of 12, with eight alternates.
During 1½ days of initial screening, about 430 prospective jurors were brought into court in large groups for questioning by the judge as Jackson, his lawyers and the prosecution watched.
Melville listened to prospective jurors' explanations of why they could not sit through a long trial and rarely asked any follow-up questions, merely saying, "All right, thank you." It appeared that he granted most of the excuses.
Over both days of screening, about 200 prospective jurors said they could not serve.
Fewer than 100 fans were on hand Tuesday as Jackson arrived in a black suit with gold and red stripes down the legs of his pants. The pop star was upbeat as he entered court, chatting animatedly with his lawyers and smiling when jurors arrived. At one point he took out a large yellow legal pad and took notes.
Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting a teenage boy and plying him with alcohol at his Neverland Ranch in 2003.
Trial observer Jim Hammer, a former San Francisco assistant district attorney, said jury selection may be going faster than expected because more than the usual number of prospective jurors were willing to participate in the case.
"I think part of it is the celebrity factor, being a part of history," Hammer said. "If anything, more than half this jury (pool) is willing to serve."
Among the prospective jurors who were excused were those who said they could not leave their posts at nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base, several pregnant women and a large number of self-employed workers who said they would lose their livelihood if they could not work for six months.
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Michael Jackson Arrives at the courthouse today _
Michael Jackson arrived for the start of his child-molestation trial Monday, greeted by a crowd of fans shouting encouragement who pressed against fences to see the pop star.
Jackson, wearing white and shielded by an umbrella, waved to supporters as he walked into court. During the morning hours before his arrival fans danced and sang a Jackson song deriding the district attorney and booed a woman who held a sign backing the alleged victim, a 13-year-old boy. Many had spent the night outside the little courthouse.
Hours before jury selection was to begin, Jackson's parents spoke out in his defense, saying the pop star's young accuser was simply after his money.
"I know my son, and this is ridiculous," his mother, Katherine Jackson, said in an interview broadcast on CBS' "The Early Show." She said people who believe her son is guilty "don't know him."
Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, said his son was beloved around the world but had trouble in the United States because of racism. He said the accuser's motives were clear: "It's about money."
Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville summoned 300 people to court for the first round of jury selection Monday. Another 300 are to follow on Tuesday, with a final 150 scheduled to arrive on Wednesday. From that pool, the judge hopes to find 12 jurors and eight alternates, but the process could take a month or more.
Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting a cancer patient — then age 13, now 15 — and plying him with alcohol. Early Sunday, Jackson issued a court-approved video statement on his Web site, predicting he would be acquitted.
"Please keep an open mind and let me have my day in court," Jackson said, looking directly into the camera. "I deserve a fair trial like every other American citizen. I will be acquitted and vindicated when the truth is told."
On Monday, Jackson spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain said the pop star's "spirits are great," and shot down rumors that he had been suicidal.
"He has the support of his family, his children, his friends," she said. "You're going to see a Michael Jackson who is going to be here today who is very serious — very businesslike and very serious." Jackson is being prosecuted by Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon, 61, whom Jackson has derided in song as a "cold man" with a vendetta. A child-molestation case Sneddon tried to build against Jackson 10 years ago fell apart when the singer's accuser reportedly accepted a multimillion-dollar civil settlement and refused to testify in any criminal case. The challenge facing the court is not to find jurors ignorant of the case but to find those who say they can put aside everything they have heard and look at the evidence as if they had heard nothing. The referee is Melville, 63, a veteran of the bench who has refused to tolerate tardiness or even, in one case, a bathroom break for the defendant. At the final pretrial hearing Friday, Melville made it clear that he won't abide lawyers attacking each other and that the gag order stands. Earlier this month, the 1,900-page transcript of the case prosecutors presented to the grand jury that indicted Jackson was leaked to thesmokinggun.com and ABC News. Among other things, the transcript included the accuser's testimony that Jackson closed his eyes tightly while molesting him on a bed, and that the pop star ignored the child's warnings that he shouldn't drink alcohol because of his medical condition. More than 1,000 applications for media access have been submitted, some of them from as far away as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Canada and Mexico. Jackson's family members were expected to attend much of the trial, although the judge said he would not permit them in the courtroom when it is packed with prospective jurors.
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Victim or Pawn?
Michael Jackson's lawyers are poised to target the credibility of his young accuser by portraying his mother as a rapacious financial predator during the singer's trial.
They are expected to paint the boy, a 15-year-old recovering cancer patient identified only as "John Doe," not as a victim of molestation but as a puppet of a grifter mother who coached him in making false accusations against the star.
Jackson's crack legal team has made it clear during nearly a year of pre-trial hearings that the 36-year-old mother, known as "Jane Doe," is firmly in their sights.
The "Doe" family -- which includes the boy, his mother, a 14-year-old brother and a sister who live in Los Angeles -- has been the subject of intense media scrutiny since accusing Jackson.
But the alleged victim, a Michael Jackson fan who asked a Los Angeles comedy club owner to introduce him to the star when the boy was gravely ill in 2000, has had a difficult childhood.
He has battled the cancer that forced the removal of one of his kidneys, saw his parents' marriage break up and became the object of a bitter court custody battle between them.
Since his November 2003 arrest, Jackson's lawyers have alleged that Jane Doe is a greedy opportunist with a history of launching questionable lawsuits to profit from the financial settlements.
In one of those alleged schemes, they say, she won a 137,500 dollar settlement from a US department store which she sued in 2001, claiming security guards had assaulted her and her sons.
Last May, the family sued Los Angeles child welfare officials seeking financial damages over the leak of a confidential memo which said a departmental investigation had found there was no evidence to suggest Jackson had sexually assaulted the boy, according to court documents.
And the Celebrity Justice television show reported that the mother allagedly tricked a newspaper into printing a story in 2000 that sought donations for her son's cancer treatment which was fully covered by insurance.
Jackson's lawyers will now likely try to show that the now re-married woman coached her son and his younger brother to make up stories about Jackson for the authorities in a bid to extort him.
"She made statements that her children can sue Michael Jackson after they turn 18," Jackson's lawyer Thomas Mesereau said in court last September. "She said she is not after money then she says she is after money."
Mesereau did not reveal what the woman did for a living, but said she knew how to file lawsuits and had once accused her ex-husband of molesting one of her sons and falsely imprisoning him in Los Angeles.
Jackson has been charged with 10 counts, including molesting the woman's son when he was 13, conspiring to kidnap and unlawfully imprison him and his family and plying the youngster with alcohol in order to seduce him.
The celebrity trial officially kicks off in this small central California town on Monday with the jury selection process, and light will be thrown on the still secret details of the case in opening arguments in late February.
Prosecutors contend that the boy "thought Michael Jackson was the coolest guy in the world" and that Jackson showered him with gifts.
The youngster appeared on camera in the documentary "Living with Michael Jackson," which was broadcast in February 2003, and in which the star acknowledged having shared his bed with children, sparking off the scandal that eventually led to his arrest.
After the television program aired, prosecutors said, Jackson and his associates forced the alleged victim's family to take a vacation in luxurious resorts.
The boy's stepfather then admitted in court last year that he requested money for the family's participation in a video made by Jackson aides in a bid to restore the star's reputation after the documentary was aired.
But Jackson's entourage contends that the family took gifts, including a car, from Jackson and that the accusations against him only emerged after the gifts stopped coming.
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Michael Jackson Quote of the Month
It is in my family on my father's side. I use make-up to even out the blotches. When people make up stories that I don't want to be who I am it hurts me...what about all the millions of people who sit out in the sun to become darker, to become other than what they are? No one says anything about that. --Michael Jackson
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