Accuser's Mother Back on Trial

The trial of Michael Jackson is winding down. The trial of the accuser's mother is still in full swing.

With Jay Leno expected to add his star power to the Jackson's defense on Tuesday, the pop star's lawyers called on social workers and a local newspaper editor to help do their bidding on Monday.

Witness after witness portrayed the accuser's mother as a welfare cheat and something of a scam artist.

Mercy Manrriquez of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services testified that the woman applied for assistance days after receiving a five-figure settlement in a sexual-assault lawsuit against a department store.

Connie Keenan, editor of the El Monte, California, newspaper, the MidValley News, told jurors, per Court TV, that the mother lobbied for a second article on the woman's then-ill son because "she didn't make enough money from the first story."

The woman's ex-sister-in-law testified that the mother once complained about a blood drive that had been organized for the cancer-stricken boy. ("She told me that she didn't need my f--king blood--that she needed money.")

Mike Radakovich, an accountant who poured over the financial records of the accuser's family at the defense's request, testified that Jackson's enterprise spent "several thousand dollars" on travel, food and body waxes for the allegedly exploited clan.

Despite the tenor of the day's proceedings, it is Jackson, not the accuser's mother, who is the defendant in Santa Maria, California.

The 46-year-old entertainer is accused of molesting the woman's eldest son, then 13, plying the boy with alcohol and conspiring to hold the child and his family hostage at the singer's Neverland estate.

The accuser's mother is not charged with anything, although the prosecution has charged that the defense is trying to pin her with a welfare fraud rap.

Before testifying last month, the mother put the kibosh on questions about her welfare status by invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

But the Fifth couldn't save her reputation from testimony from the likes of Manrriquez.

According to the welfare official, the woman's 2001 application did not mention her family's then-recent $152,000 windfall from JCPenney. Nor did it mention her then-husband's medical insurance plan. And as the woman's run on food stamps and public assistance ran into 2003, the woman did not mention that her future husband, an Army officer, was helping pay bills and depositing her welfare checks into his bank account. Alone, any of these disclosures might have threatened the woman's welfare eligibility.

Not that he would dream of piling it on, but defense attorney Robert M. Sanger wondered aloud about potential welfare red flag.

"During the month of February 2003, if [the mother] had received several thousand dollars in gifts, spa treatments, trips to Miami, private jet flights, lodging, food--if she had received that sort of thing...should she have reported that to the welfare department?" Sanger asked Manrriquez.

Replied Manrriquez: "Yes."

Prosecutor Tom Sneddon long ago acknowledged that the mother--his key witness in the conspiracy charge against Jackson--had a welfare problem. In his opening argument, he told jurors that the mother took money she wasn't entitled to. He also said that the mother would admit on the stand to her wrongdoing, which she didn't.

The defense has seized on the mother's checkered past in trying to convince jurors that she is no more credible now than she was then.

But the impeachment of the mother only went so far. While Radakovich testified that the mother deposited $32,000 (presumably her share of the JCPenney lawsuit), then shortly after withdrew $29,000 in the form of a money order made out to a car dealership, suggesting that the woman blew the funds on a car at the same time she was applying for welfare, the accountant couldn't say for sure if the mother actually bought the car. Radakovich said there was no paper trial showing that the money order had been cashed. And, in fact, the mother testified that she didn't buy the car, changing her mind at the last minute.

As the trial enters its end stages, Leno is expected to be one of the defense's flashiest weapons in its attack on the mother.

Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. has promised jurors that the Tonight Show host, who mercilessly mocks Jackson from his late-night pulpit, will say that the mother and her eldest son once tried to milk him for money.

Jackson, who claims to have been the easy mark that Leno wasn't, has pleaded innocent to all charges.