Created: Saturday, 21 May 2005
Monday, May 16, 2005
On day 53 a security guard at Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch testified Monday that he caught Mr. Jackson’s teenage accuser and his brother with a bottle of wine, and a maid told the jury that she saw adult magazines in the brother’s backpack.
Defense attorneys in Mr. Jackson’s trial called the Neverland employees to challenge prosecution claims that it was Mr. Jackson who exposed the children to alcohol and adult materials — showing instead that the boys willfully sought out and found the items completely on their own.
The defense also attacked the family’s claims of being held against their will, calling witnesses who said there was no hint of captivity when the mother went to a spa for a body waxing or when her children went to an orthodontist to have their braces removed, all at Mr. Jackson’s expense.
The trips to the spa and orthodontist occurred at a time when the family was allegedly being held captive by Mr. Jackson and associates. The mother has described the dental visit as a ruse to try to escape.
Security guard Shane Meredith testified that he found the boys in the wine cellar, which has an entrance behind a juke box in Neverland’s arcade, after noticing that the juke box door was open.
Meredith said he went down the stairs and surprised the boys.
“I saw the two children laughing, giggling,” Meredith said. “I could see them with a bottle of alcohol. … I told them they needed to get out of that area right now. … They were pretty shaken.”
Meredith noted that the bottle was half-full.
Neverland maid Maria Gomez also testified she once saw adult magazines in a backpack that she believed belonged to the accuser’s brother. The backpack was in a guest unit.
Testifying through a Spanish-language interpreter, Gomez also said that the boys’ mother praised Mr. Jackson as “a blessing to them,” but about a week later “started talking about being there against her will … that we should help her leave.”
“On that occasion, she said three persons were holding her there” and identified three Mr. Jackson aides, Gomez said. The woman added that the aides were “interfering” in her relationship with Mr. Jackson.
The defense has shown that the associates were actually conspiring against Mr. Jackson to profit off his troubles, rather than conspiring with Mr. Jackson.
Earlier, many witnesses have testified that the family gave no indication of needing help during the spa and dental appointments. The mother of Michael Mr. Jackson’s accuser did not call for help while visiting an orthodontist and a bodywaxer during her family’s alleged captivity.
Carol McCoy, a skin care specialist, said that on Feb. 11, 2003, she did a full body wax on the mother, who had been dropped off at the spa and was free to leave at any time.
“Did she say anything or do anything that suggested she was being restrained in her liberty?” asked defense attorney Robert Sanger.
“No,” said McCoy, who performed a $140 waxing procedure on the mother.
Orthodontist Jean Lorraine Seamount and assistant Tiffany Haynes described a visit by the accuser and his little brother, older sister and mother on Feb. 24, 2003.
Seamount testified that the mother said she wanted her children’s braces removed because the orthodontist who had put them on had “found out who she was” and wanted more money.
Seamount said she advised against the removal but the mother insisted.
Both Seamount and Haynes criticized the behavior of the boy who is now Mr. Jackson’s accuser. Haynes said he was “rude” and Seamount said he went through drawers containing sterile items.
Seamount and her assistant told the trial jury that the accuser’s mother and her two sons made no attempt to alert the authorities or escape their alleged captors during a two-hour visit to her surgery on February 24, 2003.
She said it would have been easy for the woman and her sons to flee or call for help during the appointment that she earlier told jurors she made in order to escape.
“I never saw anybody with them,” Seamount said of claims that the family was held under watch by Mr. Jackson bodyguards during outings from the star’s Neverland Ranch, near the California town of Santa Maria.
While Seamount’s assistant testified that Neverland’s estate manager sat in the waiting room while the family was in the consulting room, both witnesses said none of the family gave a sign they were being held against their will.
The mother and her sons did not ask to use the telephone or to leave the surgery by the back door, Seamount told jurors.
Neverland worker Kathryn Bernard also told of taking the mother to town to go shopping.
“She was just praising Michael and telling me how bad she had it with her ex. I kept thinking, ‘I don’t know this lady and why is she telling me this?'” Bernard testified.
Outside court, Mr. Jackson spokeswoman Raymone K. Bain said the defense expects to call CNN’s Larry King to testify Thursday. The defense is expected to ask whether attorney Larry Feldman once said during a breakfast meeting with King that the accuser’s mother made up the molestation story.
Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville was expected to hear arguments from Monday over the testimony of celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos, who represented Mr. Jackson for more than a year until Mr. Jackson’s indictment in April 2004.
Geragos testified on Friday that Mr. Jackson had assured him that nothing improper had happened with the teenaged accuser.
Though lawyers in California are barred from discussing private conversations they have had with clients, Mr. Jackson agreed to waive that attorney-client privilege so that Geragos could testify in his defense.
But the judge halted Geragos’ testimony and sent jurors home when Mr. Jackson’s current lead defense lawyer, Tom Mesereau, disclosed that Mr. Jackson had only agreed to let Geragos testify about events leading up to Mr. Jackson’s arrest in November of 2003 — limiting cross-examination by prosecutors.
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