"Barely Legal" Mix-Up at Jackson Trial

If Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial ends in acquittal, the pop star may have Barely Legal to thank.

Under an exacting cross-examination by defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. on Tuesday, the younger brother of Jackson's accuser conceded to lying during a previous court case and backtracked on testimony about a girlie magazine supposedly shown to him by the singer.

"Michael Jackson never showed you that magazine, Barely Legal, did he?" Mesereau asked the brother, pointing to a cover of the X-rated publication that jurors were shown Monday.

"He did show us," the 14-year-old replied.

"He did?" Mesereau asked again.

"Yes," the boy said again.

Then Mesereau pointed out that the date on the magazine was August 2003--months after the brother and his family moved out of Jackson's Neverland Ranch for good.

"Well, I never said that was exactly that one," the boy clarified.

Tuesday was the boy's second day on the stand in the Santa Maria, California, courtroom. His initial appearance seemingly was a success for the prosecution, with the boy offering potentially damaging testimony about catching Jackson with his hand inside his older brother's "underwears."

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting the older brother, serving him wine and alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive. The singer has pleaded innocent to all charges.

In Tuesday's abbreviated session (court adjourned before noon), Mesereau didn't directly combat the molestation allegations, but he laid the groundwork for such an attack, quizzing the brother on Neverland's alarm system.

The teen said "an electric bell"--not a very loud one, he noted--goes off every time someone enters the hallway leading to Jackson's bedroom. Prodded by Mesereau, the boy said the alarm sounded on the occasion he alleges he walked up to Jackson's bedroom and saw Jackson molest his brother. The boy didn't mention the alarm during Monday's testimony and didn't mention if Jackson appeared to have heard it. (He said his brother was asleep during the groping and, presumably, the bell ringing).

Mesereau intimated that the boy's story of what he saw going on inside the bedroom had morphed, from his telling authorities that Jackson's hand was on top of his brother's underwear to Monday's testimony where he said the hand was inside his brother's underpants.

While his sister repeatedly explained away lapses in her courtroom testimony on her youth, the boy blamed a "court reporter's mistake" on a discrepancy in what kind of wine (red on Monday, supposedly white in an earlier interview) he saw in a can being quaffed by his brother. He also blamed the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department for reputedly inventing a passage about how he and his brother once visited the X-rated Website Pussy.com.

"I never said that," the boy said, as he reviewed a transcript of his interview with sheriff's investigators. "That's just a paragraph that somebody wrote."

The boy blamed no one but himself for lying about his parents' relationship during a 2000 deposition in the family's sexual-assault case against JCPenney. Under Mesereau's questioning, the boy admitted to falsely stating that his parents never fought and that his father never hit him.

"Please tell the jury why you lied under oath," Mesereau instructed the boy.

"I don't remember," the boy replied. "It was, like, five years ago. I don't remember nothing."

The boy said he also didn't remember telling a psychologist that Jackson served him white wine and vodka. On the stand on Monday, the boy said Jackson poured him only wine.

The boy did, however, have a keen sense of recall of the lounge next to the wine cellar at Neverland, describing it as being stocked with sleeping bags, pillows, "canned sausages and a bunch of, like, little Michael Jackson gold energy drinks."

In his opening argument, Mesereau charged that the accuser and his brother were "out of control" during their time at Neverland and broke into the wine cellar themselves. On the stand, the brother denied trespassing into the room and said he and his brother never snooped around Jackson's bedroom, went through the singer's stash of "girlie magazines" or surfed adult Websites on their own.

Like his sister, the boy rejected Mesereau's suggestion that he had been coached by the prosecution on what to say on the stand. And like his sister, he claimed to have "never" discussed the Jackson case with his family.

The key defense exhibit Tuesday was a Father's Day card sent by the brother to Jackson. It was signed "Love, your Blow Hole," Jackson's nickname for the boy, and talked of his family's love for the singer. The card predated 2003's so-called rebuttal video in which family members claim they were instructed to refer to Jackson as a father figure.

While Tuesday's court action was dominated by the defense, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon elicited an arguably chilling sound bite from the boy. Once while he, his brother and another child were gathered on Jackson's bed, the boy testified, the singer told the kids "not to tell anything that happened, 'not even if they put a gun to your head.' "

The boy said it was unclear what Jackson meant.

Outside the courtroom, Jackson told reporters he was "feeling fine." Later, his camp released a statement intimating that Monday's testimony, which ranged from the molestation allegation to a story about how he humped a mannequin, had upset the singer.

In other developments, the court released several documents relating to the case, including the Jackson defense team's formal opposition to Jay Leno's request to be exempted from the judge-imposed gag order.

While Leno is a "genuinely funny man," the motion says, the Tonight Show host should not be allowed to be funny where the Jackson trial is concerned. Leno has been subpoenaed by the defense to talk about his dealings with the accuser's family. He is currently barred from telling jokes about the trial, passing off his one-liners to guests like Dennis Miller and Brad Garrett.