Monday, May 23, 2005
On day 58 witnesses testified that the mother of Michael Jackson’s young accuser continually defrauded welfare authorities, “duped” a local newspaper into raising money for the family and cursed at a relative who tried to help her cancer-stricken son.
The testimonies portrayed the mother as greedy, dishonest and willing to exploit her sick child for money — a key theme of defense lawyers as they try to convince jurors that she goaded the boy into fabricating accusations of sex abuse against Mr. Jackson to try and extort money from him.
The mother of Michael Jackson’s accuser committed fraud when she did not disclose on a welfare application that her family received money from a $152,000 lawsuit settlement 10 days earlier, a welfare official testified Monday at Mr. Jackson’s trial.
Mr. Jackson’s lawyers have painted the woman as a “professional plaintiff” with a history of welfare fraud and bilking celebrities who trained her children to lie in a bid to extort Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Jackson’s lawyers, who have shown the accuser’s family to be shakedown artists, also called an accountant to show that the family dined, shopped and ran up other expenses at a cost of $7,000 to Mr. Jackson during a week they were allegedly being held captive by Mr. Jackson.
Mercy Manriquez, an employee of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, testified that she handled the mother’s Nov. 15, 2001, application for assistance. The application, signed by the accuser’s mother, said that the woman had no other sources of income and no assets.
Manriquez testified that a person who willfully excludes sources of income from the forms is committing fraud.
Before the mother testified in the trial, she invoked Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on the welfare issue and was not required to talk about it. However, Judge Rodney S. Melville allowed the defense to present records and testimony about it to jurors.
The jury was shown checks for $769 each in monthly payments that were deposited in the bank account of the woman’s then-boyfriend, who is now her husband.
The defense, which is expected to rest their case by as early as Tuesday, called a forensic accountant to analyse the income and expenditure of the mother of Mr. Jackson’s 13-year-old accuser during the period around the family’s alleged captivity.
The accountant, Mike Radakovich, also analyzed records regarding the settlement of a lawsuit against J.C. Penney. The accuser’s family had sued the department store chain, complaining they were beaten by security guards.
Radakovich said the total amount of the settlement was $152,000, of which portions went to the woman’s three children, to her former husband and toward attorneys’ fees.
The mother’s share was $32,307, which was deposited into an account for the benefit of one of her sons, who then had cancer, Radakovich testified. That boy would later become Mr. Jackson’s accuser.
Within days, however, Radakovich said, most of the money had been withdrawn and was used to buy a cashier’s check for $29,000 written to a Ford dealership.
The mother testified previously in the trial that she considered buying a car with the money but never did. There was no evidence that the check was ever cashed.
The accountant also pointed to two checks for 10,000 dollars each that the woman received from a comedian on behalf of her then cancer-stricken son during the same period about two years ago.
“She was getting money under false pretences,” legal analyst Jim Moret said. “She was getting money from her boyfriend, she was getting money from Michael Jackson at the same time as she was getting welfare checks.”
The accounting testimony also showed bookkeeping entries for Mr. Jackson’s Neverland Valley Entertainment Co., which picked up the bills for expenses during a period when the family was staying at a hotel in the San Fernando Valley.
Charges included clothes purchases from Banana Republic, Pacific Sunwear, Levi’s and Anchor Blue. For one two-day period, the shopping total was $4,800, according to the records.
The jurors also heard Monday from Neverland maid Maria Gomez, who described how a sensor-triggered alarm outside Mr. Jackson’s bedroom sounded as people approached the door.
The defense has shown that the presence of the alarm means that the brother of Mr. Jackson’s accuser could not have surprised Mr. Jackson fondling his alleged victim, as the accuser’s now 14-year-old brother claimed in his testimony.
In brief but emotional testimony, the boy’s aunt told jurors that she organized two blood drives after learning from TV news reports that her nephew had cancer. Instead of thanks, she said, she got a rude phone call from the mother, with whom she rarely spoke.
The aunt said the woman, who had been married to her brother, dismissed her offer of blood with an obscenity, demanding money instead, a recollection that caused her to burst into tears.
The aunt was followed on the witness stand by the editor of a community newspaper who said that in 1999 the mother convinced her to publish a story about the boy’s cancer that she ultimately saw as a bid to raise money.
Connie Keenan, whose tiny Mid-Valley News did not normally run such articles, said she assigned the piece to an intern after the mother pestered her staff to publish a story.
Keenan said she found dubious the mother’s claim that a single chemotherapy injection for her son cost $12,000 and she was bothered that the mother had listed her name and home address in asking for donations.
After the story ran, Keenan said, the mother called back asking for another story because the first had not raised enough money.
“The conversation was approximately one minute and 20 seconds,” Keenan said under questioning from lead defense lawyer Tom Mesereau. “I didn’t want to talk to her any more because I had already established that I had been duped.”
Once the defense rests, prosecutors will get a chance for rebuttal and the defense can then put on witnesses again for counter-rebuttal.
Both sides have indicated they intend to limit themselves to a few days, according to sources close to the Santa Maria, California court. The rival lawyers will then present their final arguments before handing the case to the 12 jurors who will decide Mr. Jackson’s fate.
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