Friday, May 20, 2005
On Day 57 Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville handed the defense a victory on Friday when he ruled that Mr. Jackson’s former attorney, Mark Mr. Geragos, could resume his testimony after it was abruptly halted last week.
Mr. Jackson waived an attorney-client privilege so Mr. Geragos could testify. But midway through the day defense lawyers told the judge that the waiver was limited to events before Mr. Jackson’s November 2003 arrest. This prompted an objection from prosecutors that the move had limited cross examination.
Mr. Geragos was summoned by the defense to testify that it was he and not Mr. Jackson who put the accuser’s family under surveillance in February and March of 2003, and repeated that assertion under questioning by prosecutor Zonen.
During an often contentious cross-examination that saw testy exchanges between Mr. Geragos and Zonen and repeated objections from Mr. Mesereau, Mr. Geragos refused to concede that he or his investigators had done anything improper.
Attorney Mark Mr. Geragos’ testimony led to verbal sparring matches with Zonen, but the prosecutor drew little from the veteran defense counsel.
Mr. Geragos told jurors that when he was retained by Jackson, his initial concern was to defend the singer and father of three against any allegations with regard to his own children. But after he discovered the accuser’s family had been involved in a lawsuit with JCPenney, he said he began to worry that they might try to embroil Jackson in a “shakedown.”
Mr. Geragos testified that he hired investigator Bradley Miller to follow the family, but he had little recall during cross-examination about the timing and substance of specific conversations with Mr. Miller, and he appeared to distance himself from some of the actions of his own hired guns.
For instance, he did not know how he came to possess the family’s passports, which he found in an evidence locker in his office many months after the family’s civil attorney sent letters asking that they be returned.
Instead of returning the passports to the family or to the attorneys involved in the case, he sent them to Melville’s clerk, he said, as he believed they had evidentiary value.
Mr. Miller has not taken the stand during trial, and it is unknown whether he will be called, but Mr. Geragos seemed to be shifting blame at times onto his former investigator.
Mr. Geragos denied having any prior knowledge that one of Mr. Miller’s associates would surreptitiously record an interview between social services and the accuser’s mother in February 2003.
Jurors heard parts of that illegal recording during the prosecution case. They also played videotapes for jurors showing that Mr. Miller had the family secretly filmed and even followed the accuser’s 16-year-old sister as she walked home alone from school.
“I assumed the children would be in the company of adults,” Mr. Geragos said of the filming, adding that he did not tell Mr. Miller to film the family, but instead wanted reports about who they were meeting and what they were doing, fearing they would sell false stories about Jackson to the tabloids.
“I wanted to know what they were up to,” Mr. Geragos said.
Mr. Geragos was also grilled about why Mr. Miller had paid for the final month’s rent on the family’s East Los Angeles studio apartment, moved their property out while they were staying at Neverland, and then placed their belongings into a storage space in Mr. Miller’s name.
Prosecutors say Jackson and his aides were preparing to send the family on a one-way trip to Brazil, where they would be out of the public eye. The accuser’s mother previously testified she never gave anyone permission to move her out.
But Mr. Geragos told jurors Friday that relocation was the mother’s idea.
“She wanted that done,” Mr. Geragos said.
The mother told Mr. Miller, according to Mr. Geragos, that she was moving into her boyfriend’s apartment, and so Mr. Miller “was trying to assist her, trying to be on her good side.”
Mr. Geragos said that he did not direct or condone the move, and he did not have any recollection whether Mr. Miller billed him for the rent and storage space or if Jackson’s accountant was billed.
Prosecutor Zonen did not appear convinced that it was a charitable act.
“Would Mr. Miller be willing to pay my next month’s mortgage?” Zonen asked.
“I’m not sure. How big is your house?” Mr. Geragos deadpanned.
Zonen also asked Mr. Geragos why, if he believed the family was going to shake down Jackson, he did not advise all parties to distance themselves from the accuser.
“You still had the opportunity to tell Brad Miller, ‘What, are you nuts? Don’t do anything for the [family].'”
“No. No, on the contrary, I wanted to know what she was up to. I didn’t want him to lose track of her,” Mr. Geragos testified, adding that he suspected the mother would do “exactly what happened.”
“Because sooner or later,” the attorney testified in a decisive tone, “she’d be in the hands of a lawyer, go to a psychiatrist, and all of a sudden we’d get a false accusation.”
Mr. Geragos testified under a waiver of attorney-client privilege that was limited to events before Mr. Jackson’s arrest in November 2003. Before the lawyer took the stand Friday, Melville said he believed lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. had misrepresented Mr. Jackson’s waiver.
“I feel deceived by Mr. Mesereau and I am considering … sanctions of some sort against Mr. Mesereau,” Melville said without taking immediate action.
Also on Friday, prosecutors told the court that the defense in Mr. Jackson’s trial may rest early next week. That would end the defense case in less than half the time Mr. Jackson’s attorneys had initially said they would need.
“We’re approaching the end of trial,” prosecutor Ron Zonen told Judge Rodney S. Melville. “The defense has indicated they may be resting as early as next Tuesday.”
Defense attorneys did not contradict the statement but did not comment on it. Sources close to the trial indicated that when the defense winds up, prosecutors will offer a rebuttal lasting around two days and consisting of further witness questioning, followed by a brief defense counter-rebuttal.
Both sides would then present their closing arguments, before the case is finally handed to the jurors to allow them to decide whether Mr. Jackson is guilty of the 10 charges he faces.
Zonen revealed the schedule change in the course of requesting that the defense rapidly turn over materials related to the testimony of Mr. Jackson’s former attorney Mark Mr. Geragos.
The defense had said at the outset that they would need about six weeks or possibly up to eight weeks to present their case, which began May 5. A list of more than 300 possible defense witnesses that was submitted included such celebrities as Kobe Bryant, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross and Jay Leno. The defense was expected to call Leno on Tuesday.
Mr. Jackson’s attorneys presented a rapid succession of witnesses who supported Mr. Jackson’s claim that he did not molest a 13-year-old boy and that there was no a conspiracy to hold the boy’s family captive.
Among the most powerful defense witnesses was actor Macaulay Culkin, who spent part of his childhood as a Mr. Jackson houseguest and said that Mr. Jackson never touched him inappropriately.
Two other young men who spent time at Mr. Jackson’s’ Neverland ranch as children also denied accounts by prosecution witnesses that they were seen in suggestive situations with Mr. Jackson.
Before court recessed for the weekend, the prosecution succeeded in blocking a defense bid to bring a man named by prosecutors as an unindicted coconspirator to the witness stand under immunity from prosecution.
Prosecutors had granted Vincent Amen so-called use immunity during a lengthy interview, but decided not to call him as a witness. The defense had sought to call Amen as a witness using the immunity prosecutors had granted, but the judge ruled against it.
Melville also refused to order the playing of a tape of Amen’s interview with prosecutors.
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