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Jackson trial hits a mean streak
No one gets out of this case unsmeared
 Frazer Harrison / Getty Images file Prosecutors have portrayed Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch as a predator's lair. Jackson's defense team has described it as a quiet refuge where the singer can meditate, one that was upended by the accuser's rowdy behavior. Two days in and the personal attacks are already flying. |
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Sometimes you can watch a trial and believe both sides are telling the truth, if incomplete versions of it. It's pretty hard to do that in the Michael Jackson case.
After his opening statement, it should come as no surprise that, since the 1993 investigation of Jackson fell apart, district attorney Thomas Sneddon has been portrayed as having an axe to grind. Jackson joined that chorus himself, even, calling Sneddon "a cold man" in his 1995 song "D.S."
Sneddon sprang into action Monday, describing Jackson's career in a shambles after the airing of the 2003 documentary by Martin Bashir in which Jackson said it was a "beautiful thing" to share his bed with boys.
As Sneddon told it, Jackson's associates leaned on the accuser, 13 at the time, and his mother to go on camera again and help defend the man they called "Daddy Michael."
He told of Jackson's first encounter with the accuser in 2000: the initial visit to Neverland, a sleepover party that included browsing Internet smut with the accuser, the accuser's brother and Jackson's own son Prince Michael.
Peter Pan? Jackson filled Neverland with talk of masturbation, Sneddon said, and walked around naked and erect, telling the two boys, "It's natural." Milk and cookies, he said, were replaced with soda cans filled with wine and liquor, what Jackson termed "Jesus Juice."
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And when it was clear the family would turn against him, Sneddon accused, Jackson's henchmen made subtle threats against them.
In short, Sneddon portrayed Jackson as a slimy predator who leveraged his wealth and status, his fantasyland filled with toys and video games and exotic animals and amusement-park rides to ensnare a vulnerable boy like the accuser and "change his moral antenna."
Neverland isn't a paradise, in Sneddon's view; it's a lair.
Call him Michael, Mr. Jackson if you're nasty
Some defense attorneys might try and sympathize with an accuser, and claim everything might be a misunderstanding. Tom Mesereau Jr. must enjoy tossing dice, because his opening gambit to jurors was the verbal equivalent of shock-and-awe on the Jackson accuser's family and its reputation.
In his version, the accuser and his siblings are ungrateful little brats, and their mother essentially a money-grubbing harpy. As Mesereau told it, Jackson is the victim: "a very shy person, a very private person" whose trust was abused by a bunch of opportunistic money-grubbers who concocted abuse claims when their money train ran out of steam.
Within moments of addressing the jury, he unleashed his first broadside, telling jurors how the accuser called TV host Jay Leno for help; but Leno rebuffed them and told police, "Something was wrong. They were looking for a mark."
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