Michael Jackson Is Acquitted on All Counts in Molestation Case

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BRODER"><span class="byline-author" data-byline-name="JOHN M. BRODER" itemprop="name">JOHN M. BRODER</span></a></span><time class="dateline" datetime="2005-06-13T01:00:00-04:00" itemprop="dateModified" content="2005-06-13T01:00:00-04:00">JUNE 13, 2005</time> </p> <div class="story-meta-footer-sharetools"> <div id="sharetools-story-meta-footer" aria-label="tools" role="group" class="sharetools theme-classic sharetools-story-meta-footer " data-shares="facebook,twitter,email,show-all,save" data-url="https://web.archive.org/web/20190621012728oe_/https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/national/michael-jackson-is-acquitted-on-all-counts-in-molestation-case.html" data-title="Michael Jackson Is Acquitted on All Counts in Molestation Case" data-author="By JOHN M. BRODER" data-media="" data-description="The complete acquittal ends a nearly four-month trial that featured 140 witnesses whose testimony painted Michael Jackson as either pedophile or Peter Pan." data-publish-date="June 13, 2005"> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-1">Continue reading the main story</a> <span class="sharetools-label visually-hidden">Share This Page</span> <div class="ad sharetools-inline-article-ad hidden nocontent robots-nocontent"> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-1">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </header> <script type="text/javascript"> if ( window.magnum && window.magnum.getFlags().indexOf('headlineBalancer') > 0 && window.magnum.headlineBalancer && window.magnum.headlineBalancer.initialize && window.magnum.headlineBalancer.shouldRun() ) { window.magnum.headlineBalancer.initialize(); } </script> <div class="story-body-supplemental"> <div class="story-body story-body-1"> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="215" data-total-count="215">SANTA MARIA, Calif., June 13 - Michael Jackson was acquitted today of all charges in connection with accusations that he molested a 13-year-old boy he had befriended as the youth was recovering from cancer in 2003.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="325" data-total-count="540">Mr. Jackson's complete acquittal - a stinging defeat for a retiring prosecutor who had spent more than a decade pursuing the singer on pedophilia accusations - ends a nearly four-month trial that featured 140 witnesses who painted clashing portraits of the 46-year-old international pop star as either pedophile or Peter Pan.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="143" data-total-count="683">"Mr. Jackson, your bail is exonerated and you are released," Judge Rodney S. Melville said after the string of not-guilty verdicts were read.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="215" data-total-count="898">Mr. Jackson stood for the verdicts and later embraced his chief lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. One of Mr. Mesereau's assistants had quietly started sobbing as the first "not guilty" verdicts were read out in court.</p><div id="story-ad-1" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-1">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="346" data-total-count="1244" id="story-continues-1">Along with the verdict, the jury gave a note for the judge to read out in court. In it, they said they felt "the weight of the world's eyes upon us all" and that they had "thoroughly and meticulously" studied all the evidence. The note concluded with a plea "we would like the public to allow us to return to our lives as anonymously as we came."</p> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-2">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <div class="supplemental first" id="supplemental-1"> </div> </div> <div class="story-interrupter" id="story-continues-2"> <div id="FlexAd" class="ad flex-ad nocontent robots-nocontent"> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-3">Continue reading the main story</a> <div class="flex-ad-creative"></div> </div> </div> <div class="story-body-supplemental"> <div class="story-body story-body-2"> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="205" data-total-count="1449" id="story-continues-3">The jury of eight women and four men delivered the verdict in California Superior Court here on their seventh day of deliberations, which began June 3. The jury was not sequestered and took weekends off.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="273" data-total-count="1722">Despite their written plea to be left alone, the jurors and alternates gathered for an hourlong news conference in which they were identified only by juror number, though offering a few personal details about themselves in the process of discussing the case with reporters.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="152" data-total-count="1874">"We expected better evidence, something that was a little more convincing," a female juror said, adding she is a mother herself. "It just wasn't there."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="217" data-total-count="2091">Other jurors expressed irritation with the demeanor of the mother of Mr. Jackson's accuser, noting that she had stared at jurors throughout most of her sometimes bizarre testimony and once snapping her finger at them.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="173" data-total-count="2264">Asked about the mother's consent to let her son spend nights in Mr. Jackson's bedroom, a woman on the jury said, "What mother in her right mind would allow that to happen?"</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="252" data-total-count="2516">Asked about Michael Jackson's celebrity, the jurors said that it had little effect on them, though one juror said the case had "made him real in my eyes" and another said she came to view the somewhat eccentric entertainer as simply an ordinary person.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="292" data-total-count="2808">A middle-aged man said that although he held personal opinions about Mr. Jackson, which he declined to divulge, he sometimes forgot that Mr. Jackson was even in the courtroom. "We're basing our verdict on the 10 counts we were asked to look at," he said, not a particular view of Mr. Jackson.</p><div id="story-ad-2" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-4">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="444" data-total-count="3252" id="story-continues-4">Mr. Jackson, wearing tinted aviator glasses, a dark blazer, black tie and white wing-collar shirt, looked tense and somber as he emerged from the courthouse with his family and entourage shortly after the verdict was read, and he walked quickly to a waiting sport utility vehicle. Shielded from the bright sun by an umbrella tended by an aide, Mr. Jackson held up one hand in acknowledgement of the ecstatic fans outside cheering his acquittal.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="109" data-total-count="3361">Television helicopters chronicled his caravan's departure for his nearby Neverland ranch under police escort.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="272" data-total-count="3633">When news of the verdict spread through the crowd, a huge roar erupted among his fans, while those who had been hoping for a conviction booed. His fans, many who have maintained that the charges were part of a vast conspiracy, hugged each other, danced and threw confetti.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="263" data-total-count="3896">"Victory! Victory!" shouted Omar Reece, 25, who traveled to Santa Maria from Belleville, Ill. "He's proven himself. People have been trying to stop him for 20 years, to destroy his character, his name. And each time he's come back better, stronger, unbreakable."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="189" data-total-count="4085">John Carlson, who said he has six children, said the jury might have felt sympathy for Mr. Jackson, who had been taken to the hospital with various ailments several times during the trial.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="177" data-total-count="4262">"Maybe the jury thought his life was over," Mr. Carlson said. "They maybe had sympathy for him. Maybe it worked for him to have all that publicity about going to the hospital."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="446" data-total-count="4708">Earlier, not long after it was made public that a verdict had been reached, television helicopters arrived over Mr. Jackson's Neverland ranch near here. Cable news channels broadcast a nearly constant stream of images showing Mr. Jackson's small convoy of sport utility vehicles en route to the courthouse for the reading of the verdict. At the courthouse, crowds hastily gathered outside awaiting his arrival as the police ranks swelled as well.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="336" data-total-count="5044">Mr. Jackson was accompanied to the courtroom by several members of his family, including his father and mother, Joe and Katherine Jackson, two brothers, Randy and Jermaine Jackson, and two sisters, LaToya and Rebbie Jackson. He stopped briefly as he walked toward the courthouse lobby to wave to the throngs of fans calling out to him.</p><div id="story-ad-3" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-5">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="344" data-total-count="5388" id="story-continues-5">Mr. Jackson was prosecuted on 10 felony counts - four of child molesting, one of attempted child molesting, four of administering alcohol to aid in the commission of a felony, and conspiracy to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. Together, the charges carried a maximum possible sentence of more than 18 years in prison.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="339" data-total-count="5727">Mr. Jackson was accused of molesting the boy in February or March 2003 at his 2,700-acre Neverland Valley ranch. Prosecutors said the singer had plied the youth with alcohol in order to abuse him and had later conspired to intimidate and restrict the freedom of the boy, who is now 15, and his mother to keep them away from the news media.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="152" data-total-count="5879">But the verdict clearly showed that the jury had found the testimony of the accuser's family - the boy, his mother and his brother - to be not credible.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="248" data-total-count="6127">At a news conference afterward, Thomas W. Sneddon Jr., the district attorney of Santa Barbara County, said that "obviously, we're disappointed in the verdict," but "in 37 years, I've never quarreled with jury's verdict and I'm not going to today."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="205" data-total-count="6332">Asked whether the prosecution's case had been undermined because it depended on testimony from the "wrong family," he replied, "We don't select our victims and we don't select the families they come from."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="193" data-total-count="6525">"When a victim comes in and tells you they've been victimized and you believe that, you don't look at their pedigree," he added. "We look at what we think is the right thing, the right reason."</p><div class="newsletter-signup hidden auto-newsletter variant-1-hidden " id="newsletter-promo" data-newsletter-productcode="" data-newsletter-producttitle="" aria-labeledby="newsletter-promo-heading"> <h2 class="visually-hidden" id="newsletter-promo-heading">Newsletter Sign Up</h2> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#continues-post-newsletter">Continue reading the main story</a> <script type="application/json" id="auto-newsletter-rules">[{"headline":"California Today","summary":"The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state), delivered weekday mornings.","product-code":"CA","product-title":"California Today","sample-url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190621012728\/http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/newsletters\/sample\/california-today?pgtype=subscriptionspage&version=new&contentId=CA&eventName=sample&module=newsletter-sign-up"},{"headline":"Race\/Related Newsletter","summary":"Join a deep and provocative exploration of race with New York Times journalists.","product-code":"RR","product-title":"Race Related","sample-url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190621012728\/http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/newsletters\/sample\/race-related?pgtype=subscriptionspage&version=new&contentId=RR&eventName=sample&module=newsletter-sign-up"},{"headline":"The Interpreter Newsletter","summary":"Understand the world with sharp insight and commentary on the major news stories of the week.","product-code":"INT","product-title":"The Interpreter","sample-url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190621012728\/http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/newsletters\/sample\/the-interpreter?pgtype=subscriptionspage&version=new&contentId=INT&eventName=sample&module=newsletter-sign-up"}]</script> <h3 class="headline"></h3> <p class="summary"></p> <form name="regilite" class="newsletter-form" method="post" autocomplete="off"> <div class="control input-control"> <div class="form-errors"> <p class="error captcha-error hidden">Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box.</p> <p class="error invalid-email-error hidden">Invalid email address. 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On June 5, just two days after the jury got the case, he went to a hospital seeking treatment for back pain.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="353" data-total-count="7089">Shortly after the jury got the case, Mr. Jackson's brother Jermaine Jackson said on CNN that Michael Jackson was "1,000 percent innocent." Asked whether Michael would change his ways if acquitted, Jermaine Jackson said, "He'll become a complete recluse if found not guilty," adding, "He won't be able to deal with anyone because he can't trust anyone."</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="427" data-total-count="7516">The case arose from the February 2003 broadcast of "Living with Michael Jackson," a British documentary in which Mr. Jackson admitted sharing his bed with young boys, calling it a loving act unrelated to sex. The boy who later became the accuser was shown holding hands with the singer and resting his head affectionately on his shoulder. He was described as a 13-year-old cancer patient whom Mr. Jackson had decided to help.</p><div id="story-ad-4" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-6">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="375" data-total-count="7891" id="story-continues-6">The documentary provoked a sensation, reinforcing years of rumor and speculation that Mr. Jackson was unnaturally fond of young boys. It also led Mr. Sneddon, the district attorney for Santa Barbara County, where Neverland is located, to open a criminal investigation, reprising a similar, though unsuccessful, effort in 1993 to prosecute Mr. Jackson on pedophilia charges.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="237" data-total-count="8128">People around Mr. Jackson saw the 2003 documentary as a public relations disaster and sought to isolate the boy and his family. They also made plans for a rebuttal video to undo some of the damage and, not incidentally, make some money.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="469" data-total-count="8597">Their efforts to persuade the family to participate in the rebuttal video and to keep them away from the press, first with a flight to Florida and then several extended stays at Neverland, formed the basis of the prosecution's later charge of conspiracy to commit extortion, child abduction and false imprisonment. It was toward the end of a stay at Neverland, in late February and early March, prosecutors said, that Mr. Jackson molested the boy on several occasions.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="398" data-total-count="8995">Nearly nine months into Mr. Sneddon's investigation, on Nov. 18, 2003, a small army of sheriff's deputies and district attorney investigators descended on Neverland with a search warrant. They spent about 11 hours there, videotaping every corner of the estate and seizing hundreds of items, which they said included pornographic magazines, bedding and a lifelike doll that had been lewdly defaced.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="255" data-total-count="9250">A day later, Mr. Sneddon announced that Mr. Jackson would be charged with multiple counts of committing a lewd act upon a child. He urged other parents whose children had spent the night with Mr. Jackson to come forward to assist investigators; none did.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="391" data-total-count="9641">Thus began 20 months of a sometimes bizarre spectacle that included Mr. Jackson's choreographed airport arrest in November 2003, and his dancing atop an S.U.V. in January 2004 after his arraignment on nine felony charges, as hundreds of fans screamed outside the courthouse. He entered and left accompanied by his brothers Tito and Jermaine and a phalanx of guards from the Nation of Islam.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="264" data-total-count="9905">His lawyer at the time, Mark Geragos, dismissed the charges as nonsense, driven by the vindictiveness of Mr. Sneddon, whose 1993 prosecution fell apart when the accuser in that case withdrew his complaint after reaching a $20 million settlement with Mr. Jackson.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="298" data-total-count="10203">Legal analysts said Mr. Mesereau, , a high-profile defense lawyer from Los Angeles, outargued the prosecution team, but they were less certain that he had made a strong connection with the jurors, who were drawn from the largely conservative area around Santa Maria, a farming community of 90,000.</p><div id="story-ad-5" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-7">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="336" data-total-count="10539" id="story-continues-7">The jury, selected in less than a week in late February, was an eclectic lot, ranging in age from 20 to 79. Seven are white, three are Latino and one is Asian; the 12th juror declined to define his ethnicity. The only black to sit in the jury box was a young man who served as an alternate and did not participate in the deliberations.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="316" data-total-count="10855">Eight jurors are parents and six said they were fans of Mr. Jackson's music. One had been to Neverland, a 21-year-old man who uses a wheelchair. He said during jury selection that he had visited with a group of others with cerebral palsy. All but two jurors have some college education; three have graduate degrees.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="390" data-total-count="11245">The trial was marked by moments of bathos and melodrama and genuine tension, particularly when the accuser and his mother were on the stand. The prosecution saved perhaps its strongest evidence for last, a videotape of the boy being interviewed by a sheriff's detective. The boy, who was 13 at the time, appeared shy and reluctant to discuss the matter as the officer elicited his account.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="176" data-total-count="11421">The strain on Mr. Jackson throughout the proceedings was evident and no doubt figured in his twice seeking medical attention at a hospital, for flulike symptoms and back pain.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="336" data-total-count="11757">At one point, on a day that Mr. Jackson's accuser was testifying, Judge Melville threatened to revoke the singer's $3 million bail and lock him up for the rest of the trial after a pajama-clad Mr. Jackson shuffled in weakly more than an hour late. The defense said he had been seeking medical treatment at a hospital for a back injury.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="345" data-total-count="12102">The case appeared to take a toll on Mr. Sneddon, as well. The 64-year-old prosecutor had viewed the trial as a means to vindicate his lengthy quest to put Mr. Jackson behind bars. But several star witnesses faltered under withering cross-examination by Mr. Mesereau, and Mr. Sneddon occasionally buried his head in his hands in seeming despair.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="380" data-total-count="12482">The testimony itself often verged on the incredible. The accuser's mother harangued Mr. Mesereau and lectured the jury as she wove a strange tale of being kidnapped by Mr. Jackson's henchmen even as she was spending his money on restaurants, clothes and beauty treatments. She also spoke of a plot by Mr. Jackson's aides to have her and her family disappear in a hot-air balloon.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="286" data-total-count="12768">Mr. Jackson, who did not take the stand, was shown in a videotaped interview talking about how much he loved children and his plans to throw a birthday party for his chimp Bubbles, with a guest list of famous show-business animals like Benji, Lassie and Cheetah from the Tarzan movies.</p><div id="story-ad-6" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent "> <div class="accessibility-ad-header visually-hidden"> <p>Advertisement</p> </div> <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-8">Continue reading the main story</a> </div> <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="199" data-total-count="12967" id="story-continues-8">Testimony laid bare the hidden life of one of the world's best-known entertainers, revealing, for example, that Mr. Jackson called wine "Jesus juice," which he drank from ostensibly soft-drink cans.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="185" data-total-count="13152">Prosecutors introduced into evidence sexually explicit pictures of naked boys as well as magazines with titles like "Barely Legal," featuring female models who appear younger than 18.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="148" data-total-count="13300">Experts also told of the perilous state of Mr. Jackson's finances, saying he was spending $20 million to $30 million a year more than he was making.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="208" data-total-count="13508">Prosecutors painted a dark portrait of Neverland as the lair of a serial pedophile, not a magical place of innocence to compensate for the childhood Mr. Jackson claimed he was deprived of as young performer.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="442" data-total-count="13950">Prosecutors also made use of a California law that permits the introduction in sex cases of evidence of "prior bad acts" or a propensity to commit sex crimes, even if the offenses were never reported or prosecuted. Several former Neverland employees testified that they had seen Mr. Jackson molest young boys, but the defense showed that those witnesses were a mixed group with grudges against Mr. Jackson and financial motives to smear him.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="370" data-total-count="14320">The defense's chief contention was that the accuser and his family had set up Mr. Jackson for an elaborate scheme, using the boy's illness as a hook. In his summation, Mr. Mesereau repeatedly called the family "con artists, actors and liars" who had pressed numerous celebrities for money, committed welfare fraud and leveled a phony assault charge against J.C. 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Michael Jackson Is Acquitted on All Counts in Molestation Case - The New York Times