Issue 341
June 17, 2005
The following article appeared on latimes.com on June 11,
2005:
For
some, Jackson verdict is already in
Tim Rutten
Regarding
Media
As trials of
the century go, Michael Jackson's is turning out to be a pretty low-key affair.
There are
several reasons for that:
Without the
soap opera effect created by cameras in the courtroom, trials no longer become
the subject of the nation's casual conversation, as they once did. In our wired
world, the majority of Americans apparently find little entertainment value in
discussing people and events they haven't seen for themselves. No eye contact,
no obsession seems to be the rule in these matters.
The nature
of the charges against the singer makes it distasteful for most people under
most circumstances. There are few well-strung-together people willing to engage
in a detailed, no-holds-barred discussion of child molestation alleged or
proved even in private, let alone in a public place or social gathering.
Moreover, trials involving charges of sex crimes inevitably narrow down to
tests of the credibility between accuser and accused. There's no who-done-it to
engage the collective imagination. That's why so much of the conversation that
has attended Jackson's trial and the jury's subsequent
deliberations
has been about his eccentricities, lifestyle or finances. For those so
inclined, there's plenty to talk about there.
Finally, all
this "King of Pop" stuff notwithstanding, the fact is that Jackson
isn't that much of a celebrity anymore at least not in the United States,
where trials of the century long have been a popular blood sport. By Thursday,
there were 2,200 members of the working press accredited to cover the events
around the Santa Maria courthouse, but they came from 33 countries. These days,
Jackson is an international celebrity but more or less a domestic curiosity.
There is one
striking difference between, say, the O.J. Simpson case, which set the standard
by which these events are judged, and this millennium's first trial of the
century.
Over the
last few years, an entire segment of the U.S. news media essentially has
elected to pursue its commercial interests by seceding from American
journalism. This group includes most of the commentator/personalities on Fox
News with the notable exception of Greta van Susteren; the prime-time segment
of CNN Headline News; and, most particularly, Court TV.
These
operations no longer feel constrained by even the minimal requirements of
fairness, balance or dispassion required to practice American-style journalism.
Instead, they operate as an unapologetic cheering section for the prosecution.
They've never met a criminal defendant they didn't want to see slammed
Michael Jackson prominent among them.
No verdict;
no problem.
We already
know he's guilty. Besides, we're on the side of victims.
If you
watched this week's coverage of the watch on the Jackson jury, you must have
lost count of the number of times Nancy Grace Court TV's harpy in chief and
the dark star of Headline News looked into the camera and, with swimming eyes
and quivering lower lip, began a sentence by saying, "As a crime victim
myself, I
."
It is
impossible not to know at this point that Grace's fiancι was murdered in the
course of a robbery. People are entitled to grieve as they must unless, to
gloss Wilde's defense of sexual privacy, they do it in the road and frighten
the horses. Then it becomes a public matter. Here, as so often these days, we
confront what has become a pornography of pain.
Once you
obliterate the boundaries that used to delineate journalism from advocacy, all
sorts of other irritating barriers fall as well. Take, for example, the
customary prohibition against using your position in the news media to promote
personal interests. All this last week, Grace has been using her shows to
promote her new book, "Objection," published this week.
Every one of
her shows ended with some sort of plug for it, but the apogee was reached
Wednesday. That was the day the book hit the stores and Grace not only
discussed her book on both her Court TV and Headline News shows, but also for a
full hour on CNN's top-rated show, "Larry King Live." You can't buy
that kind of publicity unless, of course, you're engaged in the media
equivalent of self-dealing.
Grace also
feels free to tell interviewers that she dislikes all defense lawyers and
writes that "the Founding Fathers set up our Constitution in a way that
allows defense attorneys and defendants to literally get away with
murder."
Take that,
Jim Madison, you victim-hating swine.
Still, Grace
is hardly alone in availing herself of the opportunities that abound when all
boundaries fall and restraints are lifted. These days, Court TV and other news
outlets of this sort are filled with lawyers willing to opine on the guilt of
defendants whose trials they never witnessed and psychologists and
psychiatrists willing to diagnose people they've never met.
Friday, Lisa
Bloom another in Court TV's apparently endless supply of tough blonds told
her viewers that a verdict was imminent because she was "wearing my lucky
jacket." If there were doubts about what that verdict would be, they
quickly were eliminated as she moved on to interview her special guest,
"victims' rights attorney" Gloria Allred who also happens to be
Bloom's mother.
As much of
the foregoing suggests, this new appendage to the news media is a fairly blunt
instrument; one doesn't look to its employees for subtle thinking or
expressions of higher sentiment irony, for example.
But if
you're somehow obliged to pay close attention, there are moments, though
unconscious, certainly that could paste a Nancy Grace-caliber sneer to the
face of a plaster saint.
On Friday
morning, for example, as the Jackson jury's deliberations entered their 25th
hour and every other source of on-air amusement flagged, Court TV presented a
sort of mini-documentary on the Fatty Arbuckle case. Period black-and-white
photos and a grim voice-over solemnly described how the silent-era star had
been subjected to grossly biased, sensational and, in many cases, false press
coverage over his alleged role in the death of a young actress following a
weekend drinking party in San Francisco. In large part because of the hue and
cry from the gutter press, Arbuckle suffered through two
mistrials
before a jury finally acquitted him the third time around. In a note submitted
as part of their verdict, the jurors felt compelled to say that the defendant
had been subjected to "a great injustice" and that they had
"exonerated" him because no scrap of evidence had been produced to link
him to the alleged crime. (It's now thought that the victim died of
complications from a botched abortion. The prosecution's chief witness turned
out to be a liar and scam artist.)
But despite
those conscientious jurors' best efforts, the documentary concluded, Arbuckle
was financially ruined, his movies were banned in theaters across the country
and he never really worked again.
"There
are compelling parallels" to the Michael Jackson case, mused Court TV's
anchor-at-the moment, Jack Ford.
"Oh yes,"
replied Diane Dimond, the network's correspondent on the scene in Santa Maria,
"both men are 46."
"Fascinating
parallels," chimed in another anchor, because "Fatty Arbuckle in his
time was regarded as a freak of nature," just like Michael Jackson.
You probably
could make this sort of thing up, but what's the point?
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on June 14, 2005:
THE
JACKSON VERDICTS
Jurors
Say They Stuck to the Facts, Not Feelings
Panelists
say they set aside Michael Jackson's celebrity status and examined evidence.
They now just want to get back to their lives.
By Stuart
Pfeifer and Monte Morin
Times Staff
Writers
SANTA MARIA,
Calif. They included a 79-year-old great-grandmother who enjoys a good game
of bridge, a 21-year-old who deliberated from a wheelchair, and a 45-year-old
mother of three who worked in a supermarket.
By their own
admission in court Monday, jurors in the Michael Jackson child molestation case
came from modest, anonymous backgrounds before they suddenly felt the
"weight of the world's eyes" upon them when they were asked to decide
the fate of one of the world's best known pop stars. It was a moment that
reduced several of them to tears.
Poring over
98 pages of jury instructions and taking notes until their hands went numb,
jurors said they examined every piece of evidence and set aside all personal
feelings about Jackson and his behavior. As troubling as it was to some, jurors
said they stuck purely to the facts of the case.
"I think
that Michael Jackson probably has molested boys," juror Raymond Hultman
said.
"But that doesn't make him guilty of the charges in this case."
While jurors
issued a statement through the judge asking that they be allowed to return to
"our private lives as anonymous as we came," many willingly abandoned
that anonymity in the hours that followed. As the jurors piled out of a
sheriff's van and headed to their own cars, an army of television network
"bookers" showered them with free plane tickets, hotel rooms, meals
and limousine rides if they agreed to appear on the next morning's news
programs.
Juror Mike
Stevens, 21, of Santa Maria had agreed to appear on ABC, NBC and CBS before he
rolled his wheelchair through his front door.
But the
notoriety of the case and the intense media focus was the least of their
concerns during the 14-week trial, jurors said. In most cases, the jury gave
reporters the slip by entering through the back of the courthouse.
"It
really didn't bother us that much," juror Melissa Herard said of the media
spectacle.
What the
panel found far more difficult to deal with, though, were the inquiries of
spouses and friends, long sleepless nights and the grueling pace of the
proceedings. Jurors plugged away at the case for six hours each day, without
lunch breaks. Rest came in the form of three 10-minute breaks only.
Jurors said
they hadn't anticipated that they would come to an agreement Monday, and the
weight of the decision caused some to weep in court.
"It was
very emotional," said Herard, 42, of Lompoc, one of several jurors who
sobbed as the court clerk read the acquittals. The mother of four said she was
not only moved by the impact of their decision "It's like a no-win
situation for everyone in both families," she said but also because the
verdict marked the end of a close and intense relationship with her fellow
jurors.
"I just
realized that it's done and it's over, and we can now go on with our
lives," Herard said.
In the end,
Hultman and jury foreman Paul Rodriguez said, the prosecution's case never
added up.
"We
were required to look at some very specific counts in this case," Hultman,
of Santa Maria, said. "One of the counts wasn't that Michael Jackson was
guilty of sleeping with boys or that he was guilty of having adult material in
his home."
Repeatedly,
jurors said they were puzzled why certain evidence was presented to them at
all. Such was the case with fingerprints lifted from pornographic magazines
found at Neverland ranch.
"We went
through a lot of fingerprints," Rodriguez said. "Ridges, you name it,
I think we heard it all things we've never thought about. But again, the
fingerprints had a lot not to do with the case because those are adult
magazines, and anyone can own them
. It doesn't prove the charge."
Panel
members said that they found testimony from the accuser's mother unconvincing,
and her manner on the stand distasteful. They particularly took issue with her
snapping her fingers at the jury and insisting at one point that an image had
been burned into her head.
"She
said a lot of things that
came on very strong," said juror Pauline
Coccoz, a 45-year-old mother of three from Santa Maria. Her view seemed to jibe
with defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr.'s attempt to characterize the
victim's family as opportunists with pecuniary motives.
Rodriguez,
63, of Santa Maria, was similarly put off by her demeanor. He recalled one
moment in particular when the woman addressed the jury box and looked into his
eyes and said, with a wink, "You know how our culture is." The
accuser and his mother are Latino, like Rodriguez. "I thought, that's not
how our culture is," Rodriguez said.
While
testimony on Jackson's activities at his ranch might have hardened some of the
jurors' opinions of the performer, others said seeing him in person helped
counteract his image as a bizarre, international celebrity.
"He's a
human," said Herard. "Watching him throughout the whole trial, I
thought, he is a normal person
. It made him real in my eyes."
Rodriguez
said viewing Jackson as a human being, not a celebrity, was an early collective
decision.
"One of
the first things we decided was that we had to look at him as just like any
other individual, not just as a celebrity," Rodriguez said. "And once
we got that established and we could go beyond that, we were able to deal with
him just as fairly as we could with anybody else."
What was far
more difficult to ignore was the stress of their duty, he said.
"My
wife says I don't smile anymore," Rodriguez said. "But maybe that
will come back."
Asked what
they were looking forward to most now that the trial was over, most jurors said
they were looking forward to getting some shut-eye.
"Sleep
is a big thing," said Stevens. "I lost a lot of sleep over this, a
lot of us have
. It's going to take a few days to get back to an everyday
routine, but it's been worth it."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on June 14, 2005:
EDITORIAL
The
Trial of a Career
For the
first time in almost two years, Michael Jackson will wake up this morning
without the shadow of possible imprisonment hanging over him. Acquitted on all
charges of child molestation, he should be facing the future with a song in his
heart and a new CD up his sleeve.
Yet while
the verdict was a humiliation for the Santa Barbara County district attorney,
Tom Sneddon, he may live to see Jackson's downfall after all. Although he did
not sway the jurors, his prosecution cast such a damning light on Jackson's
unsavory lifestyle that the former king of pop's career is in danger.
It is not
news that Jackson is weird; his bizarre behavior has been long and widely
reported. His experimentation with skin pigmentation to turn white; his
frequent nose surgeries; his close friendships with young boys; his dangling
his son out of a hotel window all have been featured in serious newspapers
and magazines as well as those sold at supermarket checkout stands.
But in court
there was evidence not only of Jackson's weirdness but of an unpalatable taste
for the tawdry. The jury saw police videos of Jackson's bathtub, his outdoor
Jacuzzi and a black briefcase stuffed with adult magazines that he kept in his
bedroom. Jurors saw a desk in his office cluttered with bare-breasted dolls in
sadomasochistic gear. There also was testimony that Jackson often was
intoxicated in the presence of children.
Jackson also
is facing financial ruin. If his career survives, he will have to severely
curtail his spending while selling billions more records and selling out
concerts well into old age to pay off the huge debts he has accumulated not
even counting his legal fees, which are surely substantial.
The trial
revealed that he has been financing his lavish lifestyle with borrowed money.
Witnesses testified that in 2003 he was $270 million in debt, was spending
twice or three times his yearly income of $10 million and was being dunned by
creditors.
If Jackson
defaults on his loans when they come due in December, he could be forced to
sell his most valuable asset: his 50% ownership of the catalog of publishing
rights to 251 songs by the Beatles, plus songs by Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson,
Little Richard and others. He may even have to sell his beloved Neverland
ranch.
Yet his finances
may actually be in better shape than his reputation. After this trial, not even
an acquittal may be enough to save Jackson's career.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on June 13, 2005:
Spectacle
Supplants Law as Focus of Jackson Trial
Celebrity
cases become surefire crowd pleasers thanks to the global reach of modern
media.
By Shawn
Hubler
Times Staff
Writer
The public
relations experts have been tsk-ing for months now. Put it this way: Martha
Stewart's people didn't let her dance on an SUV.
The
historians say the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial was more compelling. The
media restrictions have been Watergate-esque, journalists say.
Legally,
well, it's no O.J.; one lawyer compared it to "those paintings of dogs playing
poker." Still, the experts at the TV show "Celebrity Justice"
say the logistics were "even more thought-out than Scott Peterson."
The jury may
still be out in the child-molestation case against Michael Jackson, but the
verdicts on "Jacko: The Celebrity Trial" are in.
Ten years
after the O.J. Simpson double-murder case was declared the trial of the
century, trials of the century are turning out to be nearly as plentiful as
musicals on Broadway and almost as thoroughly critiqued.
"Domestic
diva" Stewart, actor Robert Blake, Laker star Kobe Bryant, the upcoming
trial of record producer Phil Spector on a murder charge, actor Russell Crowe's
recent arrest after hurling a phone at a hotel employee so much publicity has
accrued in so few years to so many well-known defendants that celebrity
proceedings have come to resemble a genre unto themselves.
The stakes
may be life-or-death, the legal issues may be far-reaching. But "people
don't just talk about the trial anymore; they talk about the impact of the
trial, the partisans, the crowd, the ancillary issues, the paraphernalia of
fame," said USC professor Leo Braudy, author of "The Frenzy of
Renown: Fame and Its History."
Conventions
have evolved: The celebrity mug shot. The celebrity heart-to-heart with the
celebrity network reporter (or late-night hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman,
for lesser offenses). The revolving-door legal "dream teams," the
sign-toting mobs at the courthouse, the ready-for-prime-time jurors, the legal
analysts. The jury consultants and publicists with their
celebrity-damage-control voodoo. The good guys. The bad guys.
Trial-watching
is an age-old entertainment, particularly with big-name cases, but the focus on
the spectacle rather than the case is a function of the media age, historians
and legal scholars say. Celebrity trials and their hoopla are national, even
global, events that come and go far more quickly than they used to.
"What's
changed is the magnitude," says Neal Gabler, senior fellow at the Norman
Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment and Society at USC. "And the
change in magnitude is because of the change in technology."
In the
1920s, attention focused on silent film comedian Fatty Arbuckle, charged with
murdering an aspiring actress, and the Chicago White Sox, accused of throwing
the World Series. The trial after the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby was
covered by radio and five newsreel companies and drew a mob of 10,000, who
waited into the night for the verdict.
"If you
look at the history of celebrity trials, they've always been the trial of the
decade. But what's really relevant are the stories," Gabler said.
"The fact that they're trials is almost incidental. They're stories of sex
and violence and mystery and famous and beautiful people, and we love that
stuff. That's why we read novels and watch 'Law & Order' and go to the
movies. These are narratives."
By this
measure, Gabler said, the Jackson trial has been less compelling than its
predecessors, and not just because there are no cameras in the courtroom.
Jackson, 46,
is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Santa Ynez Valley ranch in
2003. He has been charged with 10 felony counts and, if convicted, could face
more than 20 years in prison.
"The
sex [is] ... icky rather than exciting, and there's no one with whom to
identify," Gabler said. "There's no definite good or evil. People
think he's a freak, but the boy isn't sympathetic either."
Rather, it's
the sideshow that has captured the spotlight with this trial: the SUV dance,
the media, Jackson's umbrella bearers and Sgt. Pepper regalia, the blue pajama
bottoms, Leno's being required, as a potential witness, to outsource the
Jackson jokes in his "Tonight Show" monologue.
Also front
and center in this trial has been the cutthroat competition for celebrity
headlines.
Jonathan
Turley, a George Washington University School of Law professor, said a study he
did of the most famous trials of the 20th century found that the invention of
television didn't increase the number of high-profile trials; it just
heightened their coverage and shortened their half-lives.
"It's
just easier now to inject these cases directly into the veins of the body
politic," he said.
Demand,
however, has increased exponentially for news of famous people in legal trouble
as cable and the Internet have exploded, because court proceedings and
celebrities are surefire audience magnets.
Associated
Press correspondent Linda Deutsch, who has been covering high-profile trials
since the Charles Manson case and who has been camped for nearly four months at
the Jackson trial in Santa Maria, Calif., marveled last week at her
competition: 2,000-plus credentialed reporters from 34 nations.
"During
O.J., the only real players [besides the print media] were Court TV and
CNN," she said. "Now we often have a much larger visible press at
these cases: Fox and MSNBC and E! Entertainment. Shows I've never heard of.
MTV."
A recent
newspaper column and a magazine, along with sources involved in the program,
have said that "Celebrity Justice," a syndicated television show
launched to capitalize on the shortage of celebrity news in mainstream outlets,
is slated for cancellation this fall. Though the big reason is lack of
advertising its ratings have suffered from its obscure time slots part of
the problem is also said to be that other media have begun to co-opt its
franchise.
"Celebrity
Justice" executive producer Harvey Levin declined to comment on the
cancellation rumors, but he did acknowledge the effect of increased
competition. "It used to be that there was nothing like us on TV," he
said. "Now if you want them, you can get Jackson updates every
quarter-hour."
Saturation,
however, has engendered backlash from both celebrity defendants and judges.
Since the Simpson case, for example, most judges won't allow cameras in the
courtroom in high-profile cases. And repeated appeals have been filed by news
organizations covering the Jackson case regarding Santa Barbara County Superior
Court Judge Rodney S. Melville's decisions to withhold records that typically
are open to the public and to close legal proceedings that, by precedent, are
matters for open court.
"This
case has been a nightmare from a 1st Amendment standpoint," Deutsch said.
"All the search warrants have been sealed, all the pleadings, everything
that would normally be open. There was even something called a decorum order;
the media can only speak to each other, we can't interview spectators, we're
not allowed to talk to the Jackson family. It's as if in this trial, there is a
celebrity exception to freedom of the press."
In other
realms, though, the case has dished up plenty of the usual conventions, and
these cases "do have things in common," Loyola Law School professor
Laurie Levenson said.
Including
Levenson. A former federal prosecutor, she has become a go-to voice for the
media on high-profile cases, though initially she was just the only unbiased
observer a CBS producer was able to find in a pinch one day during the federal
trial of the L.A. police officers accused in the 1991 beating of Rodney King.
Now opining
lawyers, including novices, populate the airwaves and trawl the courthouse
plaza in Santa Maria like cabbies at an international airport. Last week's
lineup included a former San Francisco prosecutor who's entertaining the idea
of running for district attorney, a former sheriff friend of the prosecution
and a lawyer friend of Jackson's defense team, a Washington prosecutor who
flies from her Seattle office to opine in the makeshift courthouse "green
room," and a Connecticut prosecutor who quit when her boss wouldn't grant
her a Jackson trial leave of absence. She recently got a contract
with MSNBC.
Nor has the
Jackson case skimped on other fixtures of celebrity justice:
The dream team merry-go-round: One lawyer
isn't enough. Celebrities must have teams of lawyers. Jackson has had a couple.
"You have the media lawyers, the motions lawyers, the courtroom
lawyers," Levenson explained. "But then after a while, you have to
have the New Dream Team, because celebrities tend not to be easy clients."
Spector, the
record producer charged with killing an actress in his Alhambra mansion, has
gone through Robert L. Shapiro (who helped defend Simpson), Marcia Morrissey and
Leslie Abramson (the Menendez brothers) and now is being represented by Bruce
Cutler, who defended John Gotti, a mob boss.
Blake hired
criminal defense lawyer Harland Braun, who quit when the actor insisted on
being interviewed by Barbara Walters. Blake then settled on M. Gerald
Schwartzbach after hiring and then splitting from Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., who
took Jackson's case after the pop star parted ways with Mark Geragos, who was,
at the time, also representing Peterson.
The wattage: Leno, Macaulay Culkin, George
Lopez: The Jackson trial hasn't lacked for ancillary celebrities. But not all
of them offered testimony wholly pleasing to the defense. And generally, says
legal scholar Turley, they're not the greatest idea for a defendant.
"Martha
Stewart brought in a parade of celebrities who sat in the courtroom and showed
their support," he said, "and it made her look like some detached
prima donna who lived in her own upper world."
The fans: Simpson had his demonstrators
outside the courthouse. Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss had the occasional
Heidi girls in their "Heidi Ho" hats. Bryant had a guy who came out
of the woodwork offering to kill the young woman who accused him of rape.
Jackson has
blown them all out of the water. Fans have come from all parts of the globe,
some for weeks, some for months. A Los Angeles kindergarten teacher quit her
job so she could demonstrate her support for him full time. On the day of his
arraignment in January, about 1,500 cheered as he danced on the roof of his
SUV.
His fans
have heckled reporters whom they view as tools of the prosecution, an act of
loyalty matched by few other celebrity supporters. Court TV's Diane Dimond was
besieged to the point that she got a restraining order and hired security.
The spin: Gabler believes Jackson has
intentionally sought to turn the trial into a circus so the jury will see it as
he does: a kangaroo court set up by a district attorney with a vendetta.
But Judy
Leon, senior vice president of DecisionQuest, a Los Angeles-based litigation
research and strategic communications firm, says it's "a mess"
compared with, say, Stewart's public relations, which was so forward-thinking
that she's making house arrest seem like "a good thing."
The deeper meaning: Simpson's trial spoke to
race and sex and class and police corruption. Fleiss' spoke to selective
enforcement in prostitution cases and to baby boomers' fears about what had
become of the children they'd raised. After the Lindbergh trial, kidnapping was
made a federal offense carrying the death penalty and cameras were banned from
courtrooms for decades.
The Jackson
case?
"Pure
celebrity."
That's from
Charles Lindner, a past president of the Los Angeles Criminal Bar Assn. who
co-wrote the closing arguments for the defense in the Simpson trial and who
compared the trial to those paintings of dogs playing poker.
"As
much as I like Michael's music," he said, "this trial doesn't
captivate me."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on June 14, 2005:
THE JACKSON
VERDICTS
Attorney's
Career Has Had Plenty of High Stakes and High Pressure
Besides
representing celebrities, Mesereau has volunteered in Southern death-penalty
trials.
By Richard
Fausset and Jean Guccione
Times Staff
Writers
Fifteen
years ago, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. was plotting his escape from a frustrating
career as a corporate litigator. One day, he shared his plan with an old
law-school buddy.
"He
said, 'I'm going to read every book by every famous criminal defense lawyer,
and I'm going to become a famous criminal defense lawyer,' " recalled Dana
Cole. "I just sort of rolled my eyes and said, 'Good luck.'
"But
now, of course, he is the world's most famous criminal defense lawyer. It was a
self-fulfilling prophecy."
No one knows
whether Michael Jackson's waning career will be revived by Monday's acquittal,
but it has certainly burnished the reputation of Mesereau, the pop singer's
lead defense attorney.
The
silver-haired litigator was a relative unknown even in the Los Angeles legal
community until three years ago, when actor Robert Blake hired him. Now, a
world audience has witnessed the attorney's decisive victory for an eccentric
client whose fate at the hands of a Santa Maria jury was by no means a given.
"It's
one of the biggest cases of the decade, and he won the case outright,"
said veteran criminal defense lawyer Harland W. Braun. "It looked like a
difficult case, given Jackson's history and strange conduct and strange looks
and everything
[but Mesereau ] was able to handle the cards he was dealt very
deftly."
In hiring
the attorney, Jackson got a lawyer familiar with high pressure and high stakes.
In addition to representing celebrities, he has volunteered his services
representing defendants in death-penalty cases.
It is a
unique background that may have helped the 55-year-old New York native win the
respect of Jackson and his entourage, and in turn help keep them subdued and
focused during the trial.
"He's
got all of these different factions trying to pull [Jackson] in different
directions," Braun said. "Given Tom's background and all the legal
work he's done with the disadvantaged, and with the African American community,
that gave him the gravitas to control the defense ship."
Long before
Jackson was ever drawn into court, Mesereau, a former Harvard boxer, gained a
reputation in Southern California's black community for representing prominent
figures, including former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, and offering free
legal advice to the poor.
It took him
years before he found his calling as a criminal defense lawyer. Mesereau came
from a military family, and his grandfather was disappointed when he chose
Harvard over West Point for undergraduate studies.
Mesereau studied
international relations at the London School of Economics before earning his
law degree from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in
San Francisco. He did a brief stint in Washington, D.C., both on Capitol Hill
and at a law firm, then tried his hand as a prosecutor in Orange County.
As a defense
attorney, he represented former Compton Councilwoman Patricia Moore in fighting
extortion and income fraud charges. She was convicted but sentenced to 33
months 24 months less than federal prosecutors had sought in 1997.
Two years
later, a judge dismissed the case against another Mesereau client, Larry
Carroll, a former KCBS-TV Channel 2 newscaster who had been charged with
investment fraud.
The attorney
also persuaded San Bernardino County authorities in 2001 not to file rape
charges against Tyson.
About the
same time, Mesereau began volunteering to represent defendants accused of
murder and facing possible execution in Alabama and other Southern states.
He persuaded
one jury to convict a 24-year-old mother of the lesser crime of manslaughter in
the beating death of her 22-month-old daughter. He convinced another jury to
acquit a homeless black man in a racially charged case of a murdered
21-year-old white woman.
In another
case, a mentally ill man who confessed to murder during a home-invasion robbery
not only escaped execution but also was made eligible for parole after just
seven years in prison.
Although he
didn't represent Blake in court during the actor's murder trial, Mesereau won
an early victory when he persuaded the judge to free the former
"Baretta" star while awaiting trial. After the acquittal, Blake
thanked the attorney for his help.
It was a
twist of fate that brought Mesereau and Jackson together. The singer had wanted
Mesereau to represent him, but the lawyer was busy with Blake's defense.
Mesereau abruptly quit the Blake case in February 2004, citing irreconcilable
differences, about the same time that Jackson dismissed attorney Mark Geragos.
Now that
Mesereau has had a turn in the limelight, he has experienced some of the
unpleasantness that goes with celebrity trials including his loss of privacy
and the second-guessing from legal experts in the media who don't always know
what they are talking about, said Jennifer Keller, another law-school
classmate.
"I
would say this experience has made him somewhat disdainful of the whole
celebrity lawyer routine," she said. "He thinks lawyers should be
lawyers and they should do things for the client, not for themselves."
* * * * *
The
following article appeared in nytimes.com on June 14, 2005:
14
Strikes and the Big Case of a 37-Year Career Is Out
By JOHN M.
BRODER
SANTA MARIA,
Calif., June 13 - He tried to smile. He said he had no regrets. But there was
little District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon Jr. could do to cover up the bitter
disappointment of the complete and utter defeat in the biggest case he has
handled in his nearly four decades as a prosecutor.
Mr. Sneddon,
who first began investigating sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson
12 years ago only to be thwarted when the singer reached a $20 million
settlement with his accuser, acknowledged the pain of losing such an enormous
case. But he refused to second-guess the jury.
"I've
been a prosecutor for 37 years, and for 37 years I've never quarreled with a
jury's verdict, and I'm not going to do so today," he said. He grimly
replied "no comment" to several questions about whether he intended
to continue investigating Mr. Jackson and gave the same answer to the question
of whether he believed a child molester had escaped punishment.
While Mr.
Sneddon put on a stoic face when he met reporters, his disappointment
registered in the courtroom earlier in the afternoon as the 64-year-old
prosecutor slumped in his chair when it became clear that the jury was going to
deliver not guilty verdicts on all 14 of the charges they considered. Mr.
Sneddon later suggested that Mr. Jackson's celebrity had played a role in the
acquittal. "It seems to us that that was a factor," he said,
"but maybe we're just looking for explanations in the wrong places."
"I'm
not going to look back and apologize for anything we've done," he added.
The
prosecutor said there was no turning point in the case, but he seemed to
acknowledge that the accuser and his family were less than ideal witnesses.
"We don't select our victims; we don't select the family of our
victims," he said. "We don't look at their pedigree. We look at what
we think is right."
Still, the
prosecution's nine-week presentation to the jury was replete with missteps and
setbacks. The mother of the boy who has accused Mr. Jackson of molesting him in
2003 spent her time on the stand describing a kidnapping in a Rolls-Royce and a
scheme to make her family disappear in a hot-air balloon. The accuser himself
gave differing versions of how and when the molesting began.
Some legal
experts said Mr. Sneddon should not have been surprised that his witnesses
failed him. "When you bring a case that requires expenditure of such
enormous financial and community resources and you are so wiped out by a
verdict, it calls into question the prosecutor who brought it," said
Anthony M. Glassman, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.
"It
surely could not have been a mystery that the alleged victim and his family had
all the baggage they had. Those just aren't the kinds of cases that prosecutors
with good judgment should be bringing."
But Jean
Rosenbluth, another former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at the
University of Southern California, supported Mr. Sneddon's decision to pursue
the case.
"He
sincerely believes Michael Jackson is a serial pedophile," Ms. Rosenbluth
said. "He had an obligation to put his evidence before a jury and let them
decide. And some of those jurors may believe in their heart of hearts that
Jackson is guilty but that it wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt."
It is
unlikely that Mr. Sneddon will again try a case that commands the global
attention of the Jackson trial. Mr. Sneddon, who is serving his sixth four-year
term as district attorney, has said he will retire next year.
He is, say
those who have worked for and against him, a tenacious and hard-nosed
prosecutor. One of his nicknames is Mad Dog, because once he gets a defendant
in his grip he rarely lets go. He once tried a murder defendant three times
after two hung juries, finally winning a conviction that sent the killer away
for life.
"He's
persistent when he believes the case is there," said Jim Thomas, a former
Santa Barbara County Sheriff who has known Mr. Sneddon for more than 20 years.
"And he was sure in this case."
When he
announced in December 2003 that he was bringing charges of child molesting
against Mr. Jackson, many expressed the belief that he was driven by a vendetta
that dated back a decade.
In 1993, Mr.
Sneddon and Gil Garcetti, at the time the chief prosecutor in Los Angeles
County, investigated Mr. Jackson on similar charges. Their investigation turned
up several reports of Mr. Jackson sleeping with and groping boys. But their
case against Mr. Jackson crumbled when the family of the main accuser reached a
multimillion-dollar settlement with Mr. Jackson and refused to cooperate in any
prosecution.
After that,
Mr. Jackson wrote a song, "D.S.," about his tormenter, whom he called
"Dom Sheldon," which sounded very much like "Tom Sneddon"
on the track. The refrain, repeated over and over, was "Dom Sheldon is a
cold man."
Throughout
the Jackson trial, it was clear that Mr. Sneddon was offended by the
superstar's behavior; he tried repeatedly to impress upon the jury that his
style of life was bizarre and criminal. He portrayed Mr. Jackson's Neverland
Valley Ranch as a candy-coated pedophile's lair, soaked in alcohol and stocked
with pornography.
Mr. Sneddon
and his co-counsel, Ronald J. Zonen, the chief deputy district attorney, came
into the trial with an advantage over the celebrity defendant and his Los
Angeles defense attorney, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. Both residents of Santa Barbara
County, they appeared to have a better feel for the jurors, most of whom came
from the conservative and largely agricultural northern part of the county.
The few
blacks in the jury pool during the jury selection process were dismissed by the
prosecution, although one young black man was kept on as an alternate. Mr.
Sneddon showed a certain racial tone-deafness near the end of the trial, when
the actor Chris Tucker, who is black, was on the stand as a defense witness.
Mr. Sneddon
showed a photograph of Mr. Tucker with the accuser and his family, which Mr.
Tucker said he had not seen. He asked if he could have a copy.Mr. Sneddon
replied, "It depends on whether you're a good boy or not." There were
gasps in the courtroom, but Mr. Sneddon did not appear to comprehend what he
had said.
Craig A.
Smith, a former prosecutor in Mr. Sneddon's office who now teaches law at the
Santa Barbara College of Law, said that losing such a case would not be easy
for the competitive district attorney.
"I'm
sure he will take this hard," Mr. Smith said, "but it's not going to
be the end of the world. His feeling will be, We may have lost, but at least
the defendant had to work for his acquittal."
Adam Liptak
contributed reporting from New York for this article.
* * * * *