Text size:

Accusers made it hard case to win

Experts: Prosecution was hurt by credibility problems of boy and mom, a charge that went too far and a timeline that didnt make sense

BY JOHN RILEY AND TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITERS

June 14, 2005

For any prosecutor afraid of losing, they were the victims from hell.

Over three months, jurors in the Michael Jackson molestation case heard that his accuser once denied he was molested. They heard he was scripted to lie in an earlier civil suit by his mom, who snapped her fingers at the jury and insisted she was Jackson's prisoner while she was getting leg waxes. And they heard that the pair visited a litigator who once sued Jackson for molestation before they went to law enforcement.

In a case built on the credibility of mother and son, that history provided too much reasonable doubt for jurors -- or prosecutors -- to overcome. "He was brought up in an environment where I think he was taught to lie," jury foreman Paul Rodriguez said in a CNN interview after Jackson's acquittal on all counts.

Indeed, even prosecutor Thomas Sneddon appeared defensive about his key witnesses in a post-verdict news conference. "When a victim comes in and the victim tells you they've been victimized, you don't look at their pedigree," he said.

"These cases frequently come down to a swearing match between the accuser and the defendant," said John Myers, an expert on child abuse cases who teaches at the University of Southern California Law School. "The defense here was very effective in undermining the credibility of the accuser and his mom."

It was not Sneddon's fault that Jackson's primary accuser came with baggage, other experts said, but he may have exacerbated his problems by charging Jackson and aides with conspiracy, claiming he kept the accuser's family prisoner to help in an effort to rebut suspicions of child abuse.

The prosecution's theory was that the conspiracy unfolded after the boy appeared holding hands with Jackson in a televised documentary in which the singer defended sharing a bed with him. But prosecutors produced little direct evidence tying Jackson to his aides' actions except for the testimony of the boy's mother, an erratic witness who otherwise would not have taken center stage.

She was a focus of jurors' criticism for both her finger-snapping and for what she said. "We just couldn't buy her story," Rodriguez said.

"Had Sneddon not overreached on the conspiracy count, the jury and the rest of the world would not have been introduced to the mother and all her shenanigans," said Robert Pugsley, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

Experts said the conspiracy also highlighted a troublesome timeline in the case, asking jurors to believe Jackson did not molest the boy for two years, then engaged in a criminal conspiracy over a molestation that hadn't happened yet -- and then, under a media microscope, molested the boy.

"The explanation for the verdict is two words: The mother and the timeline," said former Santa Barbara County prosecutor Craig Smith. "The mother poisoned the case, and the timeline was an obstacle they couldn't get over."

Before the trial, many legal observers predicted that credibility problems with the victims could be overcome by Sneddon's trump card: Testimony about five other instances in which Jackson allegedly acted inappropriately with young boys during the 1990s, including two cases in which he paid civil settlements.

Instead, experts said yesterday, that evidence may have backfired. Only one of the boys allegedly victimized in the previous cases took the stand to personally accuse Jackson. Much of the testimony came from employees with an ax to grind. And three of the prior "victims" denied Jackson did anything wrong with them.

"It called into question the credibility of the prosecution," said Alafair Burke, a former prosecutor now at Hofstra University law school. "It made the prosecution seem uninterested in the truth. Once that happens, you can't win a jury over."

Yesterday's verdict marked the end of a struggle that began in 1993, when Jackson was first accused of molesting a boy -- and Sneddon's attempt to prosecute was stymied by a civil settlement that made the boy unavailable as a witness. That result, some legal observers said, may have driven him to try to go too far with too little when he filed charges in 2003.

But Sneddon rejected that notion at his news conference.

"My past history with Mr. Jackson ... never had anything to do with our evaluation of this case," he said. "I'm not going to look back and apologize for anything we've done."

This story was reported by staff writers John Riley in New York and Tina Susman in Santa Maria, Calif., and written by Riley.