Kimmel Does Leno Doing Jackson

Jay Leno, Chris Tucker, Jimmy Kimmel, two Brandos, a paralegal who said she was threatened with the Mexican Mafia and the tipping of the race card.

If the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial never lacks for surreal moments, then on Tuesday, it was unusually packed with them--in and outside the courtroom.

Leno took the stand. Tucker took the stand. Kimmel took to the TV set to play Leno on E!'s nightly reenactment of the Jackson trial. (E! Online is a division of E! Entertainment Networks.) A granddaughter and daughter-in-law of Marlon Brando took the stand. A law-firm employee said the accuser's mother once vowed to sic the Mexican Mafia on her. And a dance-studio receptionist said the mother once confided that "her kids were scared to death of black people and that they hated blacks now."

Amid all this was the expectation that the defense team would rest its case by the afternoon. But with Tucker taking the stand late in the day, the comic had only begun his testimony when the proceedings wrapped. He's now due back in the Santa Maria, California, courthouse Wednesday.

Leno, meanwhile, was due back on The Tonight Show in Burbank, California, where, as every Jackson juror knows, Tuesday night's guest will be Renée Zellweger. Every Jackson juror knows this because Leno put a plug in as he left the stand.

An affable witness ("My name is Jay Leno. L-e-n-o."), the late-night host spent 30 minutes by Reuters' watch testifying to his dealings with the family of Jackson's young accuser.

Leno said he received "a number" of phone messages from the boy in 2000 when the child, then about 10, was ill with cancer.

The TV star explained he routinely talks to sick kids and that he considered himself unusually accessible.

"Sometimes they can get right to me, actually. Yes, they can. Up until today they could get right to me," Leno said, drawing laughs. "I wasn't even unlisted until a couple of years ago. I was in the phone book."

While it wasn't unusual for Leno to get or place calls, the Tonight Show host said he found the accuser's phone calls unusual--even "suspicious."

"The voice mails I got were, 'Oh, I'm a big fan. You're the greatest,' overly effusive for a 12-year-old [sic]," Leno testified.

In a trial where the accuser's mother has alleged Jackson and his henchmen scripted even the outtakes of a video interview she claimed she and her children were forced to make, the prosecution got a taste of its own medicine with Leno recounting that he thought the accuser's phone messages sounded "scripted."

"Why a comedian in his mid-50s would be [a boy's hero]--you know? I'm not Batman," Leno said.

Under questioning by defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., Leno acknowledged that he "probably" told police investigating the Jackson case that he thought the boy might have been looking to hit him up for money. In doing so, Leno essentially made good on a Mesereau promise from the lawyer's opening argument.

But, as with much of Leno's testimony, just as it looked to be a home run for the defense--it fell short of clearing the wall.

"But [the accuser's family] never asked me for any money," Leno added when asked if he believed the clan had dollar signs in its eyes.

Then in the next breath, just as the prosecution was getting comfortable, the comic zinged one back at the state's side.

"But at the time when I got the phone calls, originally, it sounded...suspicious," Leno testified. "It just didn't quite click for me, you know?"

In short, Leno was neither a blockbuster defense witness nor a major defense headache.

Even Leno's account of talking to the boy when the child was in the hospital--a potential impeachment of the boy's own testimony--was only marginally sensational.

On one hand, Leno said he definitely talked to the boy once on the telephone, something the boy himself denied on the stand. On the other hand, Leno said the boy, then undergoing treatment for cancer, sounded "groggy," making it plausible that the child was too out of it to recall the conversation.

After the lone phone call, Leno said he had no further contact with the accuser or the boy's family.

"I sent, I think, Tonight Show paraphernalia--hats, T-shirts, pictures," Leno said. "I wasn't asked for any money nor did I send any."

Leno, who successfully petitioned the Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville for an exemption to the trial's gag order--the better to keep his Tonight Show monologue stocked with Jackson gags--joked about his court appearance on Monday's show.

"I was called by the defense," Leno quipped. "Apparently, they've never seen this program."

Leno was back at it on Tuesday night's show, with his opening punchlines largely devoted to topics as Michael Jackson, LaToya Jackson and Michael Jackson's beloved chimps.

With no courtroom cameras on hand to capture Leno's testimony, it was up to Jimmy Kimmel, one of the NBC star's late-night competitors, to don the gray wig and prosthetic chin and offer his portrayal of the comic on the Tuesday edition of E!'s nightly recap show, The Michael Jackson Trial.

There was no word on who would play Tucker in Wednesday's show.

The defense used the A-list likes of Leno and Tucker to show how the accuser's family routinely buttered up celebrities. If Leno proved only somewhat helpful in this regard, then more was expected from Tucker, who looms large in the timeline of alleged misdeeds perpetrated by Jackson in February and March of 2003.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting the boy, then 13, plying the child with alcohol and conspiring to hold the minor and his family hostage. The entertainer has pleaded innocent to all charges.

Per Mesereau's opening argument, the accuser's family hitched a chartered-jet ride with Tucker to Miami in February 2003--a trip the prosecution claims was foisted on them by Jackson.

In the early going, Tucker testified to befriending Jackson around the same time he befriended Jackson's future accuser. It was the boy, in fact, that brought the two stars together. At the time, the child was in the throes of cancer treatment.

The Rush Hour star said the accuser's father was the first to reach out to him, enlisting Tucker's aid in a comedy-club benefit for the boy. After, the boy told Tucker that "they didn't make any money" off the event. Tucker responded by wiring the family $1,500 out of his own pocket.

More gifts followed--Tucker talked of trying to cheer up the boy and his family by showering them clothes, an amusement-park trip and movie-set invites.

The defense confirmed Tuesday that Tucker would be its final witness.

Elsewhere, less famous persons on the stand included: Prudence Brando, the 9-year-old granddaughter of the late acting great who said she saw the accuser and the boy's brother "crashing" golf carts "on purpose" at Neverland; Monica Wakefield, a records keeper for Kaiser Permanente, who testified that a urine sample from the accuser that the prosecution alleges Jackson's toadies tampered with in order to hide the boy's alcohol consumption was never analyzed; and, attorney Anthony Ranieri and paralegal Mary Elizabeth Holzer, whose law firm represented the accuser's family in their sexual assault case against JCPenney over a dustup with security guards.

Ranieri said the mother changed her story about the attack during her deposition. Once under oath, the lawyer said, the mother had the guards fondling her 25 times--something she'd never mentioned before, he said.

Holzer, meanwhile, recalled the mother throwing herself to the ground, and kicking and screaming, "and carrying on that the doctor was the devil and the nurses were the devil" prior to an appointment for an independent medical exam to confirm her injuries.

Later, Holzer said, the woman confided to her that her husband, not the security guards, had been responsible for her injuries. On the stand, the mother denied saying such a thing to Holzer.

The mother and her family were awarded a $152,000 settlement from JCPenney. Holzer said she never said anything about the mother's confession because she was terrified--terrified of the Mexican Mafia.

"She told me that [her husband's brother] is in the Mexican Mafia and runs drugs between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and that she knows where I live...and they would come and kill me and my 9-year-old daughter," Holzer testified.

The mother repeated the threat eight or nine times, Holzer said.

In less lethal matters, the mother once said she'd enrolled her children in stand-up comedy classes "because she wanted them to become good actors so she could tell them what to say and how to behave," Holzer said. The paralegal also talked of hearing the woman say she'd coached her two sons before taking a psychological exam for the JCPenney case.

Also taking the stand: Lessie Dean Wraggs, a receptionist at a Los Angeles dance studio, who said the mother asked for, and received, free lessons for her children, feigned homelessness, and remarked that because the security guards in the JCPenney case were black her children now "hated" black people.

With the defense presentation winding down, closing arguments could begin early next week, with the case then going to the jury.