Tweet
Jurors acquit Michael Jackson of all molestation charges
Michael Jackson arrives at the courthouse Monday to hear the verdict
A California jury found pop superstar Michael Jackson not guilty Monday of all charges in his child-molestation trial.
The jury deliberated about 32 hours before reaching its decision.
A number of Jackson's family members accompanied him to the courthouse to hear the verdict.
The verdicts were read in a packed courtroom, with a crowd gathered outside the courthouse in Santa Maria.
Monday's verdicts capped a chain of events that began in February 2003, after the broadcast of "Living With Michael Jackson," an unflattering television documentary by British journalist Martin Bashir.
In the program, Jackson was shown holding hands with the boy now accusing him of child molestation, and he defended as "loving" his practice of letting young boys sleep in his bed.
In November of 2003, California authorities searched Jackson's Neverland Ranch, following molestation allegations against the singer. Jackson was booked on child-molestation charges that month and released on $3 million bail. Formal charges against Jackson were filed in December 2003.
A grand jury indicted the 46-year-old pop star in April 2004 on charges of molesting the boy at the center of the trial, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive in 2003.
Jackson pleaded not guilty to the charges and did not testify during the trial.
Jurors had deliberated during the course of seven days. Testimony and closing arguments stretched nearly 14 weeks before the jury got the case.
Prosecutors alleged that, following the broadcast of the Bashir documentary in 2003, Jackson and five associates plotted to control and intimidate the accuser's family to get them to go along with damage-control efforts, including holding them against their will at Neverland. The molestation charges relate to alleged incidents between Jackson and the accuser after the Bashir documentary aired.
Jackson's lawyers, however, consistently portrayed the singer as a naive victim of the accuser's family, who, they claimed, were grifters -- schemers -- with a habit of wheedling money out of the rich and famous.
The Jackson trial was full of salacious testimony, dramatic moments and celebrity defense witnesses.
Among the more than 130 people who testified were former child star Macaulay Culkin. He disputed testimony from earlier witnesses who claimed they saw Jackson behaving inappropriately with him in the early 1990s.
On March 10, the first day Jackson's accuser testified, the pop star arrived late for court as the judge threatened to revoke the singer's $3 million bail. Jackson, claiming he had a back injury severe enough to require a hospital visit, finally came to court in pajamas and slippers, walking gingerly while supported by a bodyguard and his father.
The accuser, now 15, testified in graphic detail about what he claims were molestations by Jackson on two separate occasions in early 2003. During cross-examination, however, the teenager admitted he told an administrator at his school that nothing happened between him and the singer.
Prosecution witnesses included the accuser's mother, who was on the stand for three days, and a former security guard who testified that he saw Jackson engaged in oral sex with another teenage boy.
That boy received an out-of-court settlement in his family's molestation case against the pop star for an undisclosed amount. Jackson was not charged in that case and denied any wrongdoing.
Testimony in the trial closed with prosecutors showing a police videotape in which the accuser tells detectives the singer gave him wine and masturbated him as many as five times.
Members of the jury came from a pool of 200 people from Santa Barbara County, just north of Los Angeles. The eight-woman, four-man jury ranged in age from 20 to 79, including a 21-year-old male paraplegic who said he once visited Neverland Ranch, where Jackson has a mansion, zoo and small amusement park.
Source: AP
Comment