June 3 - A California jury began deliberating Friday on sexual molestation charges that, if he is convicted, could put entertainer Michael Jackson in prison for years. “It is the life, the future, the reputation and the freedom of Michael Jackson that is in your hands,” defense attorney Thomas Mesereau told the panel of eight women and four men during his closing arguments. A guilty verdict would be “potentially devastating” to the pop star, he said.
Throughout a tumultuous three-month trial, Mesereau painted Jackson’s accuser and his family as liars. In his final statement on Friday, Mesereau reminded the jury that “if you have any reasonable doubt about anything … it’s over. You must acquit.” The defense attorney reiterated his trial-long argument that the accuser and his mother are skilled grifters motivated by greed. “If you convict [Jackson] of anything, they are going to be millionaires,” Mesereau told jurors.
Mesereau ended his closing arguments dramatically, showing about 30 minutes of footage complied by Jackson’s videographer, in which the pop star spoke wistfully about his lost childhood and his love for children. Mesereau was giving the jury an opportunity to hear from Jackson, even though he never testified in his own defense.
The defense attorney then handed the floor over to prosecutor Ron Zonen for a rebuttal. In his earlier closing arguments, Zonen had said that the youth’s account of how the star introduced him to pornography and masturbated him while the two were in the master bedroom at Jackson’s Neverland estate was “entirely accurate, entirely truthful and should be believed.” Zonen ended his three-hour summation on Thursday with the words “Michael Jackson should be held responsible.”
During his rebuttal, Zonen described Jackson as a man with “no restraints on his impulses” and asked jurors to think about their own children. He again showed footage of the accuser’s July 2003 interview with police in which he told them he’d been molested by Jackson and again tried to counter the defense’s claim that the child was a gifted actor. “This is an absolutely sincere revelation by this child that he had been abused by a man he had previously been close to.”
The dueling videotapes formed a dramatic end to a 14-week trial that saw 85 prosecution witnesses and 50 for the defense. The accuser, who was 13 at the time of the alleged abuse, is now 15. The videos were “very powerful evidence," said legal consultant Michael Cardoza, who was a prosecutor for 15 years and a defense lawyer for 15 years in the Los Angeles area. "The emotion in the courtroom was palpable."
With more than 1,200 members of the media from around the world gathered in and around the courthouse and fans shouting support from the street, a pale and frail-looking Jackson, who reportedly had been to a local emergency room the night before where he was treated for dehydration, arrived at the courthouse on his mother’s arm and supported by several family members and friends.
Prosecutors have asked the Santa Maria jury to find Jackson guilty of 10 felony counts: one of conspiracy, four of committing a lewd act on a child, one of attempting a lewd act and four of giving alcohol to a minor to aid in committing a felony. Earlier in the week, Judge Rodney Melville instructed the jury that they have the option to reduce the alcohol charges to the lesser misdemeanor of giving alcohol to a minor. The maximum sentence for all charges is 20 years, but sentences on multiple counts of the same charge could be served concurrently. Even a conviction on just one count of a "lewd act" could bring a sentence of three years. Before they were sworn in and retired, Melville gave the jury additional instructions and told them "you are not partisans in this matter. You are impartial observers of the facts."
With no forensic evidence except for a few fingerprints on adult magazines, the case pits the boy’s word against Jackson’s. “It comes down to the battle over the credibility of the boy and his family,” said Andrew Cohen, a Colorado lawyer working as an analyst for CBS News. “Ultimately the jury has to decide. Both sides appealed to their common sense. If [the jury] believes the family, they’ll convict. If they don’t, they won’t.”
At the end of the day, Jackson was advised by his lawyer to give no comment as he left the court. He has appeared thin and pale in recent days, though a spokeswoman, Raymone Baine, described Jackson as "physically healthy" but nervous about the outcome of the trial. "He's going to be wanting to be pulling his hair out," she answered when journalists asked what Jackson would do while waiting for the verdict. "He's going to be relaxing with his family. None of you would want to be in his shoes."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8090905/site/newsweek/
Your thoughts on this? Do you think after 3 months of evidence and testimony the Jury will find him innocent or guilty?
Personally, having seen some of the stuff that was said in the courtroom, i do think the guy is innocent of the allegations this time around, i think the mother on the other hand, needs to have her head examined VERY closely.
Regards,
Lee
