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No Mistrial for Jackson
What's in a name? If Michael Jackson's lawyers had their way, the answer would have been a mistrial.
The singer's defense asked Friday that Jackson's three-week-old molestation trial be declared invalid, indignant that a prosecutor uttered before jurors the name of the boy at the center of the unprosecuted 1993-94 child-abuse case.
Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville denied the request.
The name-dropping incident occurred Thursday as Deputy District Attorney Gordon Auchincloss quizzed ex-Neverland Ranch housekeeper Kiki Fournier on children with whom Jackson had "close relationships."
Fournier cited former child star Macaulay Culkin, Jackson's current accuser and some offspring of Jackson associates. Auchincloss asked Fournier if the boy from the 1993-94 case would qualify as a special friend, too. She said, yes, he would.
Auchincloss did not identify the boy as being a former Jackson accuser, nor did he reference the decade-old case. He merely said his name out loud. That was enough for the defense to go on the attack.
"It couldn't have been any more blatant, and it couldn't have any more intentional," Jackson attorney Robert M. Sanger said Friday.
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Melville hasn't decided if he'll allow evidence and witnesses from the 1993-94 case to be introduced into the current trial. A hearing on that matter was set for Mar. 28.
Sanger argued the prosecution fatally jumped the gun by naming the old accuser in court.
"None of us, believe me, wants to sit here and start this case over again," Sanger said. "[But] this is a bell that cannot be unrung."
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon told Melville there was "no intent to infer there was any improper conduct on the part of Mr. Jackson with the individuals [named]" in the Fournier testimony.
A seemingly incredulous Sanger replied that improper conduct is exactly what the prosecution was inferring by only asking Fournier about Jackson's "close relationships" with preteen boys.
In his ruling, Melville said that he didn't think the brief mention of the former accuser was a difference-maker to either side.
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a boy, then 13, pushing alcohol on the youngster, and conspiring to hold him and his family against their will. He has pleaded innocent to all charges.
The singer was not in court to hear the mistrial request shot down. Friday was an optional attendance day for Jackson as the trial went dark so Melville could sort through a series of motions.
Among the judge's other rulings:
Jackson's financial records can be subpoenaed, as the prosecution asked, but Melville limited the scope of the snooping. He told prosecutors that the goal should be a general, not "detail-by-detail," look at the singer's bottom line. The prosecution alleges Jackson's alleged financial straits made him a desperate man, and set him on a course in which he was molesting his accuser, and plotting to send the boy's family to Brazil. The defense can question George Lopez about an alleged incident in which Jackson's accuser accused the sitcom star of stealing money out of the boy's wallet. Jackson's team is trying to establish that it was the M.O. of the accuser's family to latch onto a celebrity, and then accuse the star of wrongdoing.Testimony is scheduled to resume in the Santa Maria, California, courtroom on Monday.
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