-not sure if this is OT or P&N
Why the Michael Jackson Case Is Falling Apart
By JULIE HILDEN
Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2005
A recent series of setbacks for prosecutors in the Michael Jackson child molestation prosecution may have made the case unwinnable. Cross-examination by Jackson's skilled defense attorney Tom Mesereau has been devastating.
The accuser - like his brother and sister before him - has proven vulnerable to charges that he told different stories at different times. For instance, the accuser admitted that he told a concerned school official that Jackson "did nothing" to him sexually, and he has also admitted lying repeatedly in the "rebuttal video" to Martin Bashir's documentary about Jackson.
...
First, the accuser's older sister admitted to filing a false police report - and, more generally, to lying when she thought the circumstances required it. Mesereau asked: "So you'd lie about certain things and tell the truth about certain things, depending on what you are asked, right?" She replied, "Yeah."
So much for any weight that might have been given to her testimony. What might have been corroborative evidence, ended up undermining the prosecution case.
Then the accuser's brother admitted he'd lied in a case involving their father, and couldn't "remember" if he'd been told to lie in the J.C. Penney case. (He also contradicted himself on the stand about the details of an incident in which he says he walked in on Jackson groping his brother, but I think this contradiction is less damaging: Jurors can be forgiving in their assessment of contradictions in a memory of an incident that occurred when the witness was a child, and would have been extremely traumatic if it occurred.)
Most recently, the accuser himself testified - and here, too, Mesereau's cross-examination has been effective. As noted above, all three siblings have been caught in multiple lies during cross-examination.
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Why the Michael Jackson Case Is Falling Apart
By JULIE HILDEN
Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2005
A recent series of setbacks for prosecutors in the Michael Jackson child molestation prosecution may have made the case unwinnable. Cross-examination by Jackson's skilled defense attorney Tom Mesereau has been devastating.
The accuser - like his brother and sister before him - has proven vulnerable to charges that he told different stories at different times. For instance, the accuser admitted that he told a concerned school official that Jackson "did nothing" to him sexually, and he has also admitted lying repeatedly in the "rebuttal video" to Martin Bashir's documentary about Jackson.
...
First, the accuser's older sister admitted to filing a false police report - and, more generally, to lying when she thought the circumstances required it. Mesereau asked: "So you'd lie about certain things and tell the truth about certain things, depending on what you are asked, right?" She replied, "Yeah."
So much for any weight that might have been given to her testimony. What might have been corroborative evidence, ended up undermining the prosecution case.
Then the accuser's brother admitted he'd lied in a case involving their father, and couldn't "remember" if he'd been told to lie in the J.C. Penney case. (He also contradicted himself on the stand about the details of an incident in which he says he walked in on Jackson groping his brother, but I think this contradiction is less damaging: Jurors can be forgiving in their assessment of contradictions in a memory of an incident that occurred when the witness was a child, and would have been extremely traumatic if it occurred.)
Most recently, the accuser himself testified - and here, too, Mesereau's cross-examination has been effective. As noted above, all three siblings have been caught in multiple lies during cross-examination.
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