Issue 331
April 8, 2005
v An A-List Turnout Does Cochran Justice by Carla Hall
v Supremacist sentenced to 40 years for trying to have judge killed by Associated Press
v Video System Aids Order in the Court by P.J. Huffstutter
v International War-Crimes Prosecutor Gets List of 51 Sudan Suspects
v Jackson Trial Shifts Focus to Earlier Alleged Victims by Stuart Pfeifer and Steve Chawkins
The following article appeared in latimes.com on April 7,
2005:
An
A-List Turnout Does Cochran Justice
Celebrity
clients are among 5,000 admirers saying farewell to the L.A. attorney who
fought for civil rights and police reform.
By Carla
Hall
Times Staff
Writer
In a funeral
overflowing with guests and speakers, emotions and stories, Johnnie L. Cochran
Jr., the charismatic attorney who became a household name after successfully
defending O.J. Simpson, was eulogized as a man who saw his real calling in the
civil rights cases that he undertook on his "journey to justice."
The 3 1/2
-hour funeral, as extravagant as Cochran's colorful suits, lasted longer than
it took the jury to deliberate the fate of Simpson, his most famous client, who
sat among the 5,000 worshipers at the West Angeles Cathedral in South Los
Angeles.
"The
nation needs to understand why we're all here today
. Johnnie Cochran
represented to us justice personified," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, noting
that when the Los Angeles-based attorney made a second home in New York, where
Sharpton lives, he worked on police brutality and racial-profiling cases, among
others.
"Johnnie
Cochran was to this era what Thurgood Marshall was to the era before,"
Sharpton said, referring to the civil rights attorney and first black Supreme
Court justice who was one of Cochran's idols.
Directing
his gaze at Simpson, Sharpton continued, "With all due respect to you,
Brother Simpson, when we heard about the acquittal, we weren't clapping for
O.J., we were clapping for Johnnie."
The mourners
roared their approval.
"We
were clapping because for decades our brothers, our cousins, our uncles had to
stand in the well with no one to stand up for them. And finally a black man
came and said, if it don't fit you must acquit."
The mourners
gave a standing ovation as Sharpton delivered Cochran's most famous line from
the Simpson trial.
It was one
of many dramatic moments during a funeral that, like Cochran, was an engaging
and indefatigable mix funny and poignant, smart and passionate.
Dr. Calvin
Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, one of the oldest and
most influential black churches in the nation who, along with Cochran's
pastor, Dr. William S. Epps of Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, presided
gently but repeatedly urged speakers to be brief.
But the
people who came to eulogize Cochran just couldn't abide by that. Cochran was
just too rich and vivid a figure in their lives. After all, among those
gathered under one elegant and expansive roof, were two preachers and former
presidential candidates (Jesse Jackson and Sharpton), a music mogul and former
Cochran client (Sean "P. Diddy" Combs), a congressman (Charles B.
Rangel), a lawyer turned TV personality (Star Jones Reynolds) and the man whose
eventual court victory Cochran considered his most important (Geronimo Pratt,
now Geronimo ji Jaga).
And those
were just some of the two dozen people who spoke to the assembled mourners,
including his wife, Dale Mason Cochran, his sisters, his children, and his
father, Johnnie L. Cochran Sr. At the front of the church lay the polished
coffin covered with white roses, begonias and gladiola. In addition to a choir
from the Second Baptist Church, Stevie Wonder performed a song, crooning
gently, "I'll be your comfort through the pain
. "
Scattered
throughout the church were politicians and activists, members of his law firm,
business tycoons and the people who took care of him during his illness. Seated
along the wall were 225 red-jacketed members of Kappa Alpha Psi, the venerable
black fraternity, who rose from their seats when called upon, creating a
blanket of color.
Film
director Spike Lee, businessman and former Laker star Magic Johnson, actress
Angela Bassett, Los Angeles Councilman Bernard C. Parks, Rep. Maxine Waters
(D-Los Angeles), attorney Gloria Allred and F. Lee Bailey, a former co-counsel
on the Simpson criminal case, were present. Among the people who sat behind the
pulpit and waited for their turns to speak were attorneys Barry Scheck and
Peter Neufeld, who worked with Cochran and also formed a law firm with him to
tackle civil rights cases.
Neufeld
recalled Cochran taking the case of the Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, who
was brutally sodomized by New York police. Neufeld said that in that case as in
others, Cochran believed that it wasn't enough to win a large settlement. He
also demanded reforms.
"He
thought this would be an opportunity not to just deal with police
brutality," he said, but to challenge the policy that allowed police
officers to decline interrogation for 48 hours. The policy has since been
changed.
When Butts
called on Cochran's clients in the audience to stand, the group across the main
floor of the church included Simpson and Louima.
"I
believe Johnnie was a voice for those who could not speak for themselves,"
Louima said as he listened to the service. Cochran won him an $8.75-million
settlement. Louima now lives in Miami. "Besides being my lawyer, he was my
friend," he said.
Michael
Jackson who was represented by Cochran in his financial settlement with
sexual-abuse accusers in 1993 sat with his current attorney, Thomas A.
Mesereau Jr. After the funeral, he declined to speak about Cochran as he was
ushered to a waiting car. But Simpson, who departed the funeral as
photographers snapped away and onlookers called his name, spoke glowingly of
the architect of his criminal defense.
"This
turnout shows what he meant to the community," Simpson said. "He was
a Christian man. He just happened to be a great lawyer."
In the
pulpit, speakers mixed scriptural verse with anecdotes. Mayor James K. Hahn
spoke of going to the River Jordan in Israel on a trip with Cochran.
"He
didn't just love justice or admire justice, he did justice, he achieved
justice, he fought for justice," said Hahn, referring to the theme of the
service, "Journey to Justice," which is also the title of Cochran's
first memoir.
"He was
a commander of the court and a maestro of the jury," said Connie Rice, a
co-director of the Advancement Project, an organization she started with former
colleagues from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She said the second
phone call she got after she joined the NAACP was from Cochran, who offered his
help. Noting that the NAACP was once Marshall's law firm, Cochran told her,
"Anything you want, you call me."
Family
members, including his daughters Melodie and Tiffany, and his son Jonathan,
spoke eloquently of how they shared him with the world but knew he cherished
them above all else.
"He
loved basking in the sunshine of celebrity," said William Baker Sr., the
husband of Cochran's sister, Pearl Cochran Baker, and his longtime friend.
"But home with his family was where he came to exhale."
Friends
marveled at the closeness of Cochran and his wife, whom they credited with
taking extraordinary care of him.
Cochran
loved big Southern dinners and was a "devourer of barbecue," as Baker
put it. He wanted to take singing lessons, but he "suffered from extreme
rhythm deprivation," Baker said.
Battling the
effects of the brain tumor that eventually killed him, Cochran struggled
through physical therapy last summer so he could walk his daughter, Tiffany,
down the aisle at her wedding, unassisted.
"He did
it as only my dad could do it," Tiffany Cochran Edwards told the mourners.
"With grace and style, elegance and his signature smile. I learned more
about determination that day than I did from any trial," she said, her
voice wavering.
Combs
recalled Cochran as "Uncle Johnnie."
"I
really got to know him one night in December," he deadpanned about the
night in 1999 when he got himself "in a situation," which eventually
led to a weapons possession charge. "I begged him to please come get me
out of jail. It didn't matter that it was the night after Christmas. It didn't
matter that he was on vacation. He came."
Cochran got
him acquitted of the charges. "He saved my life. Because of him, I get to
see my kids, I get to see my mother, I get to make music, and I get to be here
today with you."
Like several
others, Combs recounted the dazzling figure that Cochran cut.
"When
Johnnie walked, it was like the theme from 'Shaft' was playing in the
background," said Combs, as the audience broke into laughter.
Cochran's
law partner, Eric Ferrer Jr., serenaded the group with a haunting melody on an
African instrument he said he played for Cochran while visiting him during his
illness.
When he went
to pay his respects, Ferrer said, he could think only of all the cases he still
wanted to work on with Cochran. But then he realized that he was prepared to go
on without him.
"He
trained us to continue his work," Ferrer said. "The only way to do
him justice is to do justice in the world."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on CNN.com on April 6, 2005:
Supremacist
sentenced to 40 years for trying to have judge killed
CHICAGO,
Illinois (AP) -- Avowed white supremacist Matthew Hale was sentenced to 40 years in prison Wednesday for trying to
have a federal judge killed -- the same judge whose husband and mother were
murdered five weeks ago by a man who had no connection to Hale.
Hale, the
33-year-old leader of a group that preaches racial holy war, was sentenced
after a rambling, two-hour speech in which he claimed he was the victim and
even recited part of the Star Spangled Banner. He showed no emotion and sat
staring at the defense table as the sentence was handed down.
Prosecutors
argued for the maximum sentence, saying Matthew Hale's crime amounted to an act
of terrorism, and the judge agreed.
"Mr.
Hale is not concerned about taking someone's life, but rather how to do it
without getting caught," U.S. District Judge James Moody said in imposing
the sentence. "I consider Mr. Hale to be extremely dangerous and the
offense for which he was convicted to be extremely egregious."
Hale was
convicted in April 2004 of soliciting an undercover FBI informant to murder
U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Chicago in retaliation for her
ruling against him in a trademark dispute.
Prosecutors
said Hale was furious that Lefkow ordered him to stop using the World Church of
the Creator name for his group. Lefkow said the name was trademarked by an
Oregon-based church group.
The case
took on a higher profile after Lefkow's husband and elderly mother were shot
and killed in the Lefkow home in late February.
Early
suspicion fell on Hale followers but days later a Chicago man disgruntled over
a ruling in his medical malpractice lawsuit fatally shot himself in Wisconsin
and confessed to the slayings in a note.
Hale acted
as his own attorney during the sentencing, as he had for much of the trial. He
compared himself to Lefkow, saying they were both victims.
"Before
you does stand a man who not only is innocent, not only is demonstrably
innocent, but who refused to join a plot against Judge Lefkow's life,"
Hale said.
In his
rambling, arm-waving, speech to the court before the sentencing, Hale brought
up the murders, despite Moody's efforts to stop him.
This
horrible lie may have had some effect on this scoundrel and what happened to
her family," Hale said.
He admitted
that he was "wandering a bit" but rambled on about the case. He
compared the FBI to the Gestapo, claimed the news media smeared him, said he
had been poorly represented by his former lawyer and ended by reciting the last
17 words of the Star Spangled Banner.
"Before
you does stand a man who not only is innocent, not only is demonstrably
innocent, but who refused to join a plot against Judge Lefkow's life,"
Hale said.
He said he
never meant to encourage the murder of Lefkow. In fact, he said, he considered
Lefkow and himself to be "on the same side against these liars."
At one
point, he turned to prosecutors and courtroom audience and begged them:
"Somebody tell her that it's a lie, somebody tell this poor woman."
A court
officials said Lefkow stayed away from the building Wednesday to avoid the hearing.
Hale's
parents and brother sat together in court during the hearing. "I think
it's absolutely horrible," Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, said.
"Matt's the only one in there telling the ... truth."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on April 4, 2005:
Video
System Aids Order in the Court
A Michigan
county confronts concerns about costs and security by adopting technology that
allows judges to face suspects on camera.
By P.J.
Huffstutter
Times Staff
Writer
PONTIAC,
Mich. On most afternoons, Chief Judge Wendy Potts faces a full docket
and an empty
courtroom.
With the use
of a high-speed digital video-conferencing system, Potts can see the accused
whose cases come before her every facial wrinkle and every eye blink and
they can see her inside Oakland County's 6th Judicial Circuit Court from their
jail cells across the street.
This virtual
hall of justice is part of a countywide system that experts say is one of the
nation's best in using technology to grapple with rising concerns about
security and costs at the nation's courts.
"The
less you have to move a prisoner, the more secure it is for us all," Potts
said. "Security and safety is on the minds of everyone at the courthouse
these days."
After the
courthouse killings in Atlanta last month and the February slayings of a
federal judge's husband and mother in Chicago, officials from police
departments and courthouses nationwide have inquired and come to southeast
Michigan to see how the Oakland County system is working.
Officially
launched in November, the OakVideo project is running in three district
courthouses, five circuit courtrooms, nearly all holding facilities and all of
the county prosecutors' offices. A few courtrooms are waiting for hardware or
training; by August, installation is expected to be complete.
The heart of
the $6.7-million project is a grid of high-speed data lines an estimated 680
miles' worth that link the computers of every city, village and township
building in the county.
The
technology has legal limits: Among other things, it can't be used for cases
involving minors, mental health evaluations or examinations, or the actual
trial where a person physically must appear in the courtroom.
But there's
much it can do. The bulk of criminal arraignments here are conducted by video
conference. Judges can also use it for criminal pleas, preliminary
examinations, expert testimonies, pretrial motions and sentencing for
misdemeanors.
Some judges
no longer meet with police officers to issue warrants instead they watch on a
computer screen as physical evidence is held in front of a camera.
Although
county officials say they are still gauging the cost savings, they believe the
financial benefits seem obvious.
"We can
save millions in officer overtime and transportation costs not only for
arraignments, but also for obtaining warrants and other things," said
Robert
Pence,
project manager of the video-conferencing system. "We expect this to pay
for itself in the first two years."
Advocates
say it would be foolish not to tap technology to make the judicial process
simpler and more secure. Yet Oakland County's cutting-edge system is raising
questions about legal rights: A person has the right to confront his or her
accuser. Does that mean facing them in person?
"Whenever
we introduce new technologies, we have not just unintended consequences, but
unforeseen consequences," said Jonathan Gaw, a technology industry analyst
for the research firm IDC. "They could be for good or for bad. It's almost
impossible to predict, but it's always a slippery slope."
Defense
lawyers have voiced concerns: How can they have confidential consultations with
clients if the camera is rolling? How can a lawyer see and gauge the mood
inside the courtroom from the jail?
"If this
were a trial, and I was trying to cross-examine someone's testimony, how can I
intimidate you by camera?" asked Stephen Kale, a defense lawyer and a
consultant on the project. "How can I tell if you smell of alcohol or
something else? It definitely affects the adversarial process."
The county's
efforts began about eight years ago, when police officers and prosecutors
decided they were spending too much time on the road in far-flung rural areas
trying to obtain search and arrest warrants.
"There
were times when a simple arraignment would take me away from work all day, what
with the driving and waiting at the court," said Scott Fischer, the sole
police detective for the village of Holly, Mich. "It can take an hour to
drive to the courthouse, an hour to drive back. Along the way, people have
jumped out of vehicles, tried to run off, do all sorts of things."
As an
alternative, the county's courts began experimenting with video technologies. A
computer-industry boom in the region in the late 1990s helped the agencies
involved find solutions.
Tapping
funds from federal grants and county bonds, the county's information technology
department created a computer lab to address the needs of circuit judges,
corrections officers and others.
The
department customized each of its computer systems and used software from
companies such as IBM to connect everything.
Some,
including Judge Edward Sosnick, were hesitant yet curious.
"It's a
trade-off the human dimension for technological advantages," said
Sosnick, who has been on the bench for 21 years. "Not even having the
person there? When I was younger, this would have been science fiction."
On a recent
afternoon, Judge Potts entered her nearly empty court, ready to hear a long
list of arraignments. There were only two other people a prosecutor and
Potts' court clerk in a room that can seat 60 people.
Sitting at
her bulletproof bench, clad in a formal black robe and pearl earrings, the
judge reached across the aged wooden desk and turned on a flat-screen monitor.
Across the
street, Oakland County Sheriff's Lt. Tim Atkins, a supervisor at the county
jail, stood in front of a holding cell, where three inmates in blue jumpsuits
milled about a concrete cell.
In single
file, the men took several steps into a room about the size of a walk-in
closet, with a metal ring for shackles mounted on the wall. A gray folding
chair was positioned in front of a floor-to-ceiling storage unit that housed a
large TV screen, a computer and a video camera with built-in microphone.
Potts' face,
calm and studious, looked out from the TV screen as the first man sat down.
"Shall we begin?" she asked.
About $250
million worth of video-conferencing tools are sold each year to federal and
state agencies worldwide, said Andrew W. Davis, a managing partner with
Wainhouse Research, an independent firm that specializes in conferencing
technology.
In West
Virginia, the Supreme Court of Appeals shifted to video conferencing for the
bulk of its first-appearance hearings. Within the first year of use, according
to court officials, video conferencing saved the state $30 million.
Not every
use of the technology has been judged successful. At Los Angeles County
Superior Court, judges stopped using the technology for criminal-court
arraignments because "it was not cost-effective," said Allan
Parachini, a court spokesman.
Parachini
said it was just as easy to transport inmates, usually held nearby, as it was
to put them in front of a camera.
And
technology, no matter how advanced, isn't perfect.
Potts was
about to hear her first arraignment of the day when the microphone at the jail
suddenly shut off. The judge could see a prisoner's mouth moving, his fingers
kneading his knees and the dejection in his eyes. But there was no sound.
Potts
interrupted and asked: "Can you hear me?" The prisoner's mouth moved.
She could read his lips, which formed the word "yes."
Fifteen
minutes later, a call came: Someone at the jail accidentally hit the mute
button. Problem solved.
The judge
turned toward her computer screen. Court was back in session.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on nytimes.com on April 6, 2005:
International
War-Crimes Prosecutor Gets List of 51 Sudan Suspects
By Warren
Hoge
UNITED
NATIONS, April 5 - The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
received a list of 51 suspects in the ethnic killing campaign in the Darfur
region of Sudan from Secretary General Kofi Annan on Tuesday, opening the way
for war crimes trials in The Hague.
The
confidential list, said to include the names of senior Sudanese government
officials, militiamen, army officers and rebel commanders, was compiled by a
United Nations commission in January. It reported then that war crimes "no
less serious and heinous than genocide" had been committed in Darfur, and
it recommended trial by the international court.
In the
months between the list's compilation and a Security Council resolution on
Thursday that assigned the trials to the International Criminal Court, the
Council had been at odds over the United States' vehement objections to the
court. The Bush administration relented after the Council agreed on language in
the resolution that would exempt Americans from prosecution in the court.
Mr. Annan
delivered the list to the court official, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, in the same,
still-sealed envelope that was presented by the commission in January. In
response, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, a former human rights lawyer from Argentina, said,
"Now, we have a common task: to end the culture of impunity."
At the court's
offices in The Hague, officials took possession of nine large boxes containing
thousands of commission files documenting the widespread rape, murder and arson
committed by marauding Arab militias held responsible for the forced
displacement of 2.4 million black African villagers and the deaths of up to
300,000 people in Darfur.
Serge
Brammertz, the deputy prosecutor for investigations, said it was too early to
say when arrest warrants and indictments might be issued, and he expressed hope
that Sudan would assist the court.
Sudan has
said it will refuse to hand over any of its citizens to face trial abroad and
will instead prosecute war crimes suspects itself. President Omar al-Bashir
took a public oath on Monday, swearing "thrice in the name of Almighty God
that I shall never hand any Sudanese national to a foreign court."
Mr.
Moreno-Ocampo said he would "carefully and independently assess" the
proceedings that the Sudanese government says are under way in Khartoum. He
also called for help in the investigations from individuals, governments, the
African Union and the United Nations.
In Khartoum,
tens of thousands of Sudanese marched Tuesday in support of a government campaign denouncing the Security
Council resolution ordering the trial of the war crimes suspects in the
international court. They stopped to demonstrate at both the British and
American Embassies and United Nations local headquarters.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on April 4, 2005:
Jackson
Trial Shifts Focus to Earlier Alleged Victims
By Stuart
Pfeifer and Steve Chawkins
Times Staff
Writers
SANTA MARIA,
Calif. Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial is expected to shift today
from allegations that he molested a 13-year-old boy in 2003 to testimony that
he molested or inappropriately touched five other boys in the 1990s.
Santa
Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon said the evidence of previous acts would
help prove that Jackson's current accuser is telling the truth.
Only one
alleged victim was expected to testify for the prosecution. The son of a former
Jackson maid will say that Jackson fondled him sexually on three occasions,
Sneddon said. Jackson reportedly paid $2 million to avoid a lawsuit with that
family.
Now 25,
Jackson's accuser in a 1993 lawsuit over alleged molestation is not expected to
take the stand. But his mother will probably tell jurors that Jackson had spent
30 consecutive nights with her son, then 13, in the boy's bedroom in Los
Angeles, said the boy's uncle, Santa Barbara attorney Raymond Chandler. He said
30 other sleepovers occurred at Jackson's Century City condominium, his
Neverland ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, and at hotels in Las Vegas, New York,
Florida and Monaco.
"What
will be powerful is the length of the relationship and the number of times they
slept together," Chandler said. "The important thing for the
prosecution is simply to place the two of them in bedrooms together all of
those nights."
Even if that
happens, prosecutors will be venturing into some tricky territory for several
reasons, according to legal experts.
Testimony
about four of the five alleged victims will come not from them, but from
observers who claim they saw Jackson, 46, molesting, hugging, kissing or
fondling the boys.
And three of
the five alleged victims including actor Macaulay Culkin will testify that
the pop star never touched them inappropriately, a source close to Jackson
said. That could put prosecutors in the unusual position of trying to prove
acts that the alleged victims deny.
Santa
Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville said last week that
he would
admit the testimony under a 1995 state law that allows juries in sex crimes
cases to hear about a defendant's prior sexual misconduct, even alleged
offenses that are decades old and were never reported.
Some of the
evidence that Sneddon said he intended to introduce would attempt to show a
pattern that mirrored alleged behavior in the current case.
A witness
was expected to testify that Jackson licked the head of a boy sitting on his
lap in a limousine, just as he allegedly licked the current victim's head while
they sat side by side on a flight from Miami to Santa Barbara. Witnesses will
say that Jackson shared his bed with the boys and encouraged them to call him
"daddy," as his current accuser contends, Sneddon said.
Prosecutors
may even point to horror movies as proof of a "grooming" pattern,
which is common to many pedophiles. The aim, experts say, is to accustom boys
to the idea of sexual encounters by bringing up subjects such as masturbation,
by dipping into porn and by generally acting like young teenagers.
In the
current case, the accuser told investigators that he and Jackson cuddled after
viewing a frightening video. In the 1993 case, the boy told investigators that
he and Jackson cuddled after watching "The Exorcist."
Chandler,
who said he has not been in touch with his nephew since 2000, tried to explain
why the young man would refuse to testify.
"He's
tired of being 'the Jackson kid,' said Chandler, who added that his nephew
lives under an assumed name and has moved several times in the last 10 years to
elude the press.
The mother
of the boy in the 1993 case is not likely to say she witnessed any overt sexual
acts, said Chandler, whose 2004 book, "All That Glitters," details
the case and its effect on his family.
Defense
attorneys were expected to cast her as a money-hungry opportunist who sought to
make a quick buck in a lawsuit against Jackson. But if they play that card too
aggressively, it may suggest to jurors that the woman was "selling her
son" to Jackson in return for expensive jewelry, luxury trips and the
attention of a superstar, Chandler said. That could be what prosecutors would
like jurors to believe.
The number
of alleged victims could have a cumulative effect on the jury, some legal
experts said.
"What
it does is it bleeds Jackson [from] a bunch of cuts. Rather than having to
worry about one wound, he now has five or six he's hemorrhaging from,"
said Peter Keane, former chief assistant public defender for San Francisco
County and a professor at Golden Gate University School of Law.
"There
are going to be some jurors who think, 'Where there's smoke there's fire, and
we wouldn't be hearing about all this stuff if there weren't something funny
going on,' " said USC law professor Jean Rosenbluth.
But hearing
the evidence about past acts from third-party witnesses, not the alleged
victims themselves, will not be as persuasive as hearing it directly from the
alleged victims, legal experts said.
"I get
the impression the prosecution is throwing in as much as they can to the jury
because the individual pieces are not that strong," said Rosenbluth, a
former federal prosecutor. "I do think it's obviously a huge break for the
prosecution to be able to get this stuff in, but I don't think it means there's
going to be an automatic conviction."
Jurors were
also expected to be told that Jackson has paid two settlements involving
allegations of molestation.
The alleged
victims scheduled to testify for the defense include Culkin and two
Australian-born men who met Jackson as boys and became his traveling
companions.
Both of the
Australian boys appeared on local television news broadcasts in 1993 and said
that although they had each shared a bed with Jackson, the pop star had never
touched them inappropriately.
Culkin has
also repeatedly denied that Jackson had ever been inappropriate with him, most
recently during an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live."
A
spokeswoman for Culkin said last week that the actor "is not involved in
the proceedings at this time, and we do not expect that to change."
At a hearing
last week, defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. said three of the witnesses
to the prior alleged acts whom the prosecution intends to call are
"disgruntled" employees who were found by a jury to have stolen from
Jackson.
He also said
the former maid and her son had given inconsistent accounts about what happened
during a deposition for a civil lawsuit. "She began by saying she saw
something and ended by saying she saw nothing," Mesereau said.
The former
maid, who was expected to testify about incidents allegedly involving
other boys
as well as her son, further damaged her credibility when she sold her
story to
"tabloids," Mesereau said.
Los Angeles
criminal defense lawyer Harland Braun, who has worked with Mesereau
in the past,
said he has seen cases in which prosecutors hurt themselves by bringing in weak
corroborating testimony. How the testimony about these past incidents plays out
will be a pivotal part of the trial, he said.
"That
evidence will either make or break the prosecution's case," Braun said.
"If the prosecution tries to bring stuff in and it falls short, it makes
the prosecution look like they're stretching."
* * * * *