Created: Sunday, 22 May 2005
Thursday, May 19, 2005 On day 56 the mother of Michael Jackson’s accuser complained that she and her children were being kept away from Mr. Jackson during the time period prosecutors have tried to say that one of her sons was being molested, a witness testified Thursday.
The testimony came after the judge refused to allow the defense to call CNN’s Larry King as a witness. The talk show host, Mr. King, was in court ready and willing to testify but left without taking the stand.
The judge ruled that Mr. King’s statements would be irrelevant.
Judge Rodney Melville ruled after listening to Mr. King’s account of a conversation with an attorney, Larry Feldman, who represented the accuser’s family. Larry Feldman is also the attorney who represented the accuser from 1993, obtaining a large monetary settlement from Mr. Jackson out of court.
Without the jury present, Mr. King said attorney Larry Feldman, who was asked to represent the accuser in 2003, had told him during a breakfast conversation that he had dropped the case because “he thought the woman in this case was wacko and was only in it for the money.”
Testifying earlier for the prosecution, Feldman denied making such statements about his clients, saying, “It is absolutely privileged, and if anybody tells you that, they are absolutely lying.”
After listening to an account by Mr. King and another man who also heard the conversation, the judge ruled them out on grounds they would not impeach Feldman’s testimony because neither could say the lawyer directly quoted the accuser’s mother.
Feldman was contacted by the accuser’s family members after they left Mr. Jackson’s Neverland estate for the last time in 2003. He referred them to Stan Katz, a psychologist who reported suspicions of child molestation to authorities after interviewing the family members. Mr. Katz was also involved and profited from the 1993 settlement.
On the stand and without jurors present, Mr. King said he spoke to Feldman at a Beverly Hills restaurant before the trial began. He said he and a producer were trying to get Feldman to appear on his show, Larry King Live.
The judge also ruled against testimony by a publisher, Michael Viner, who was present during King’s meeting with Feldman.
The highlight from Thursday’s testimony was that of Aja Pryor, a Hollywood casting assistant and the former fiance of movie star Chris Tucker. She told the jury that the accuser’s mother complained to her in early March 2003 that two German associates of Mr. Jackson had stepped in to keep her family away.
“I asked, ‘Does Michael know anything about this?’ She said, ‘They won’t let us around him because they know the children tug at his heart strings,'” Ms. Pryor testified.
The time period she cited is critical because prosecutors allege Mr. Jackson molested the then-13-year-old accuser between Feb. 20 and March 12, 2003.
Early in her testimony, Ms. Pryor broke down and cried when asked her about the family. “It’s hard for me because I really do love the kids a lot,” she said in an apparent reference to her reluctance to testify against them.
But under questioning from Mr. Jackson lawyer Tom Mesereau, Ms. Pryor said the accuser’s mother had asked her to take the family back to Neverland in February 2003, just after the family met with a social worker investigating possible child abuse by Mr. Jackson.
On that trip, the boy and his brother spent the day playing at Neverland and even asked the ranch manager to be allowed to stay in Mr. Jackson’s bedroom at a time when Mr. Jackson was away.
The accuser’s mother, Ms. Pryor said, never spoke critically of Mr. Jackson and praised him in lavish terms. “It was something to the effect (of) what a great man he is. He is an angel. His love is great,” Ms. Pryor said.
The woman also talked with excitement about heading to Brazil for Carnival, Ms. Pryor said. That countered prosecution claims Mr. Jackson had planned to spirit the boy’s family away to head off trouble in the wake of a televised documentary in which he appeared holding hands with the boy.
The mother’s participation in a “rebuttal video” in Mr. Jackson’s defence was voluntary, Ms. Pryor said.
“She was very anxious to tell the world that this beautiful friendship was nothing more than they saw — a beautiful friendship,” Ms. Pryor said.
When the accuser’s mother testified in the trial, she bitterly spoke out against “the Germans” and claimed they were conspiring with Mr. Jackson to hold her family captive.
Ms. Pryor began her testimony with a few tears, talking about how she met the family at the Laugh Factory club in Hollywood in 2001 when the boy was battling cancer. The owner of the club and comedians there had become involved in fundraising efforts for the family.
Ms. Pryor said she and Chris Tucker, who is expected to testify next week, began taking the children places. Mr. Tucker took them by private jet to an Oakland Raiders game and invited them to his brother’s wedding, she said.
Ms. Pryor testified that she and the boy’s mother would talk for hours at a time on the phone, but the mother never complained to her about Mr. Jackson.
The judge later handed the defense a victory when he allowed jurors to see a video tour of Mr. Jackson’s Neverland ranch.
Besides the ranch’s amusement park rides and zoo animals, the video shows numerous clocks, countering testimony by members of the accuser’s family that they were not able to keep track of time while Mr. Jackson allegedly held them against their will.
District Attorney Tom Sneddon vehemently opposed the video, saying much of it was “propaganda.” He cited in particular a scene that showed a note written on a chalkboard by one of Mr. Jackson’s children, saying “I love you daddy.”
Ms. Pryor smiled as she told Mr. Jackson’s attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. that the accuser’s mother never told her she had tried to escape from Neverland.
“Why are you smiling?” Mesereau asked.
“It’s Neverland,” the witness said. “I don’t know who would ever want to escape Neverland.”
Ms. Pryor also testified that she gave the family money and that the accuser’s mother and sister tried to pressure her to give them a car. The defense contends that the accuser’s mother tried to bilk celebrities by exploiting her son’s fight against cancer.
Recent Comments