Created: Thursday, 02 June 2005
Court Photos June 2nd: http://home.mj-upbeat.com/?p=3663
Accuser’s Family: “Con Artists, Actors & Liars”
Thursday, June 2, 2005
On day 65 defense attorney Thomas Mesereau countered the prosecution’s closing arguments stating that the accuser’s family consisted of “con artists, actors and liars.” He said prosecutors revealed the weakness of their case by attacking him and Mr. Jackson’s career during their closing argument.
“Whenever a prosecutor does that, you know they’re in trouble,” Mr. Mesereau told the panel, which is expected to get the case Friday. “This is not a popularity contest between lawyers.”
Mr. Mesereau was to conclude Friday and the prosecution was to deliver a rebuttal before the case goes to the jury. Mr. Jackson, said “I’m OK” as he left court Thursday.
Prosecutors, Mr. Mesereau said, engaged in a “nasty attempt, a barbaric attempt” to attack Mr. Jackson personally by bringing up his financial problems, collection of adult magazines and what they called, a “sagging music career.”
Mr. Mesereau also showed charts suggesting it was ridiculous to believe that during a time when Mr. Jackson was under international scrutiny he would choose to commit a sex crime.
Defense lawyer Thomas Mesereau urged jurors to acquit, saying prosceutors had not proved their case that he said was built on “lies, innuendo and exaggeration.”
Mr. Mesereau hit back hard in his closing arguments that are expected to run into Friday morning, telling jurors the prosecution case was “absurd” and based on lies.
“This is a family where children have been taught to lie. This is a family where children have been taught to con,” he said, adding that the accuser’s mother had a track record of manipulating celebrities and misfortunes for money.
Mr. Mesereau stressed that the only witnesses to the alleged molestation was the boy’s then 12-year-old brother and that the key witness to an alleged plot by Mr. Jackson to kidnap the family was the mother.
There is “no forensic evidence, no DNA, no hairs, no fibers, no witness to any of this,” he said. “There is no way in the world you can find (the accuser’s family) trustworthy beyond reasonable doubt.”
“Facts are the facts are the facts are the facts.” Mr. Mesereau explained to the jury.
He said the prosecution wanted jurors to believe “it was all Michael Jackson taking these innocent little lambs and corrupting their lives. It’s all baloney,” he said.
He appealed to jurors to dismiss the case. “If you have the slightest doubt, and it’s a reasonable one, then Mr. Jackson must go home and he must be free,” he said.
Mr. Mesereau conceded that Mr. Jackson was “different” and “offbeat,” but said he was not a criminal and that Mr. Jackson had long been the target of extortion plots.
“He has the reputation for being a very child-like person, very naive, idealistic, a musical genius, a person that likes to sit in trees and compose,” Mr. Mesereau said, urging jurors to see him through a “human lens.”
“The issue in this case is the life, the reputation, the future of Michael Jackson,” the lawyer pleaded.
The prosecutor showed again heterosexual adult material from Mr. Jackson’s collection of magazines and said jurors should understand these were part of the “grooming process” intended to get boys aroused.
Mr. Mesereau countered, “Yes. He (Mr. Jackson) is a human being. They found a lot of girlie magazines. Did he want the world to know that? No.”
Mr. Mesereau responded that Mr. Jackson wasn’t charged with possessing illegal pornography because everything in his home was legal, that no child pornography was found in his home or computers, and that prosecutors used the adult magazines just to make Mr. Jackson look bad.
“They have dirtied him up because he’s human. But they haven’t proven their case because they can’t,” he said. Mr. Mesereau suggested that this ‘dirtying’ tactic of the prosecution was used to make it easier for the jury to convict him.
Mr. Mesereau also said the boy was unemotional as he described the alleged molestation in the video and in testimony and challenged the jury to closely examine his demeanor. “You saw no emotion whatsoever when he spoke about allegedly being molested. When did you see him really get angry? When he talked about Michael Jackson abandoning his family,” Mr. Mesereau said.
Mr. Mesereau also pointed out that when the accuser was asked by the investigator in the video to name some things that he would think of as “wrong”, the accuser responded with; staying up late, fighting, breaking things and killing someone. Mr. Mesereau pointed out that unlike most children, he did not even mention lying, cheating or stealing.
In the prosecution’s closing argument, Senior Deputy District attorney Ron Zonen berated Mr. Jackson and his attorneys, stood by the testimony of the accuser’s mother, and used charts and graphics to show what he said was a pattern of criminal behavior.
Zonen argued for nearly two hours before he even brought up child molestation, focusing first on a complicated conspiracy alleging Mr. Jackson sought to hold the accuser’s family against their will.
Mr. Mesereau said the real issue was “whether the accuser’s family was credible,” and he tore into the prosecutor’s claim the boy’s mother wasn’t out for money, repeatedly returning to the refrain, “Was she asking for money?”
“When she filed for emergency welfare 10 days after getting her (settlement), was she asking for money?” Mr. Mesereau asked. “If you do not believe (the family) beyond a reasonable doubt, Mr. Jackson must be acquitted. That’s the law.”
The prosecutor acknowledged she fraudulently applied for welfare after receiving a large settlement in a lawsuit, but asserted that was the only thing she had been proven to have done wrong in her life.
And Zonen ridiculed the idea the boy’s mother could have made up the entire story and prompted her children to lie in order to get wealthy at a future time.
“The suggestion this was all made up is nonsense,” he said. “It’s unmitigated rubbish.”
Zonen depicted Neverland, Mr. Jackson’s fantasy estate and amusement park, as a place with no rules, no schooling and no discipline for children who stayed there.
“They rode rides, went to the zoo, ate whatever they wanted candy, ice cream, soda pop. There was only fun. … And at night they entered into the world of the forbidden. Michael Jackson’s room was a veritable fortress with locks and codes which the boys were given … They learned about sexuality from someone only too willing to be their teacher.”
On the contrary, Mr. Mesereau highlighted the testimonies of Neverland employees that caught the accuser and his brother with adult magazines and stealing alcohol when Mr. Jackson was no where around. Mr. Mesereau showed that the accuser is hardly the naïve youngster the prosecution presents, focusing on their long history of lawsuits where the children were coached and encouraged to lie for financial gain.
Zonen spent much of his argument attacking Mr. Jackson’s current and former lawyers.
He accused Mr. Mesereau of promising things in his opening statement that he could not produce, including mentioning celebrities who would testify who never appeared.
Zonen was defensive in talking about the boy’s mother, one of the most erratic witnesses of the trial.
“(She) never asked for one penny from Michael Jackson,” he said. “She never desired anything from him and she doesn’t today.”
“There is no way in the world you can find the (accuser and his family) are trustworthy beyond a reasonable doubt.” If that is the case, Mr. Mesereau said, “Mr. Jackson must be acquitted under our legal system.”
Mr. Jackson, who did not take the witness stand during the four-month trial sat unmoved during Zonen’s closing arguments. When he arrived at the courthouse with his parents and three brothers, a throng of about 200 supporters shouted “Fight Michael, Fight.”
Mr. Jackson’s lawyer reminded the jury that the molestation case against Mr. Jackson involved only one alleged victim.
He scorned testimony in the trial from other young friends of Mr. Jackson. “They (the prosecution) brought in alleged victims from the ’90s because they are desperate,” he said.
Mr. Mesereau said it was absurd to suggest that Mr. Jackson would have molested his accuser in the intense period of media scrutiny after the 2003 broadcast of a documentary in which Mr. Jackson defended his practice of sharing his bed with boys.
Mr. Jackson has denied four counts of molesting the boy, then 13, plying him with alcohol, and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. Mr. Jackson faces more than two decades in prison if convicted on all charges.
The case is expected to go to the jury on Friday.
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