Time and again, Michael Jackson said he would never hurt a child. On Monday, a jury of his peers did not disagree.
Jackson, the former child prodigy who once was the world's biggest-selling music force and the lifelong curiosity piece who remains the world's most famous pop oddity, was acquitted in a Santa Maria, California, courtroom of charges of molesting a teenage boy and essentially of groping a series of young males in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A sweeping victory for the defense, Jackson was cleared of every single charge facing him: one count of conspiracy; four counts of committing and attempting to commit a lewd act on a child, then 13; and four counts of plying the alleged victim with wine and alcohol.
"Justice is done. The man's innocent. He always was," said defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. in a statement.
Jackson had faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the molestation. The increasingly frail-looking star, who was in and out of the hospital during the more than four-month-long trial, cried and hugged his lawyers after the verdicts were read, reports said. Even some jurors wiped back tears.
Later, Jackson, dressed in a dark suit and tie, looked as numb as a vindicated man as he had looked as an under-the-gun defendant. He left the courthouse at about 2:30 p.m., getting into his black SUV without stopping to make a statement, mustering just enough energy to blow a few stiff kisses at overjoyed fans. It was a far cry from the defiant party atmosphere Jackson encouraged at his initial January 2004 arraignment.
The 12-member jury, eight women and four men, one of whom visited Jackson's Neverland Ranch as a child, spent some 33 hours deliberating the case over seven days. The panel reached a decision at about 12:30 p.m.
In the end, the jurors told reporters in a post-verdict press conference that they just didn't buy the accusations, they just didn't buy the accusers, and they just didn't like the accuser's mother.
"What mother in her right mind would volunteer her child to sleep with someone?" said a woman identified as Juror No. 10. The juror declined to say if she thought the mother was more to be blamed for her son's sleeping arrangements than Jackson.
But it wasn't just the mother's behavior that rankled jurors, it was her demeanor on the stand. An alleged welfare cheat, the 37-year-old woman, the prosecution's chief witness for its conspiracy charge, offered scattered, disjointed and hysterical testimony. Her habit of ignoring Mesereau and talking directly to the jury box didn't win any fans, either.
"I just didn't like when she snapped her fingers at us. [I thought,] don't snap your fingers at me, lady," the grandmotherly Juror No. 5 said.
The mother was the defense's chief villain, the ringleader of "con artists, actors and liars," as Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. called the accuser's family in his closing argument.
Did jurors accept Mesereau's assessment of the clan? "The thought was definitely there," Juror No. 10 said.
If the prosecution had not tried Jackson on the conspiracy charge, the mother would not have been needed in the courtroom. But even that move might not have changed anything. Mother or no, believable witnesses were hard to come by, jurors said.
"The telephone-company people were very credible," a woman identified as Juror No. 3 said, as her fellow panelists laughed. "That's all."
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Others mentioned as credible from the nearly 140 who testified: former Neverland housekeeper Kiki Fournier and ex-grounds supervisor Jesus Salas. Unlike several players in the trial, Fournier and Salas never sold tabloid stories or sued Jackson. And unlike several players in the trial, Fournier and Salas didn't offer particularly salacious testimony of Jackson's Neverland activities.
Perhaps one verdict reaction best summed up the prosecution's witness problems. It came from Jackson ex-wife Debbie Rowe, a nominal prosecution witness herself. It said, "Debbie is overjoyed that the justice system really works, regardless of which side called her to testify."
Jackson's journey to judgment day began with a deliberate motorcade ride from Neverland to the courthouse. Arriving at around 1:50 p.m., the entertainer was accompanied into the courtroom by his lawyers and several family members, including superstar sister Janet Jackson.
With the acquittal, Jackson's future now lies anywhere, from Africa, where the Reverend Jesse Jackson said the entertainer wants to build a theme park, to Europe, where he continues to pack arenas, to Las Vegas, where a since-denounced report had him signing as a casino headliner. A Jackson Five reunion tour with his brothers also has been floated.
On the stand, the accuser, his family and the family's lawyer repeatedly denied plans for a post-trial civil suit against Jackson. All the same, the boy, now 15, has until the age of 20 to take the pop star to court.
The verdict, meanwhile, was a crushing defeat for Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon, who'd once before tried, but failed, to pin charges on Jackson, and who was derided for his efforts in the 1995 Jackson song, "D.S.," featuring the taunting lyric, "Dom Sheldon is a cold man."
"Obviously, we're disappointed with the verdict," Sneddon said at a press conference.
Perhaps ominously, Sneddon declined to comment if his epic pursuit of Jackson was ended with the 10 "not guiltys."
Jackson's latest clash with Sneddon began more than 18 months ago when police swarmed the grounds of Neverland, questioned the estate's employees and boxed up truckloads of adult magazines and perfectly legal but questionably tasteful art books depicting young, naked males.
The Nov. 18, 2003, raid was prompted by the allegations of a Los Angeles boy, then 13, who told authorities that Jackson "put his hands in my pants...[and] started masturbating me."
The boy recounted his allegations at the trial. Also taking the stand was the boy's younger brother, 14, who told jurors that he twice saw Jackson touch his sibling as the child slept. Both teens talked about tasting alcohol and viewing pornography at Jackson's behest.
The alleged seduction and molestation occurred at Neverland between February and March of 2003, around the same time the singer was plotting to hold the brothers, their mother and their sister captive, the indictment charged.
Prosecutors argued that Jackson maintained a long-held prurient interest in dark-complected boys, aged 10-14. The current accuser fit the profile precisely.
On Monday, Sneddon took exception to the notion that his department built its case around the "wrong" family. "We don't select our victims," he said. "We don't select the families they come from."
As jurors suggested, the boy's family was hardly the prosecution's only problem. When Sneddon's team brought in a string of ex-Neverland workers to tell lurid tales of Jackson groping boys, including Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the defense countered with three of the alleged victims. On the stand, Culkin denied being molested. Wade Robson and Brett Barnes did the same.
The most salacious allegation of the trial concerned the boy whose allegations a decade ago first found Jackson publicly accused of molestation. An ex-Neverland security guard testified that he saw Jackson perform oral sex on the boy in a shower. The alleged victim, who refused to cooperate with authorities after reaching a reported $23 million settlement with Jackson in 1994, did not testify.
In his closing argument, prosecutor Ronald J. Zonen said the prosecution had proved Jackson had "molested [the current accuser] and numerous other boys."
Jackson denied any wrongdoing, from the 1993-94 investigation to the current trial. In both cases, he issued the denials via videotaped appeals and TV interviews. Despite hints from his own lawyers that Jackson would take the stand in the current case, the singer remained silent.
If Jackson had remained silent and not talked to journalist Martin Bashir in 2002, he might have avoided his current straits.
In an interview for Bashir's Living with Michael Jackson, the entertainer raised red flags about his conduct by holding the hand of a boy--his future accuser--while talking about how he routinely cuddled in bed with children.
The special aired on ABC on Feb. 6, 2003, creating a public-relations disaster for Jackson, the prosecution argued, and setting in motion the chain of events that led to the molestation and conspiracy.
The defense maintained that Jackson was the victim--a ripe, rich target for the accuser's family to exploit.
Born Aug. 29, 1958, in dirt-poor conditions in Gary, Indiana, Jackson was performing onstage at five. If it was a childhood lost, as Jackson would say, it was not a childhood entirely misspent. By the time he was 11, Jackson and his older brothers--Jackie, Marlon, Tito and Jermaine--were topping the charts with a trio of infectious hits, including "I Want You Back," "ABC" and "The Love You Save."
The group was known as the Jackson Five; Jackson, its lead singer, was known as its star.
While Jackson scored his first solo number-one hit with 1972's "Ben," his career as a singular act, right down to the singular sequined glove that would become a trademark, began in earnest with 1979's Off the Wall. The disco-dance-R&B album sold 19 million copies worldwide and spawned the hits "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You."
Then came Thriller. The 1982 album was a greatest-hits collection unto itself--seven of its nine tracks became top 10 singles, including the title cut, "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'." In the end, it won Jackson eight Grammys, sold 59 million copies worldwide and arguably made him bigger than the Beatles, whose song catalog he snapped up at the height of his buying power.
With the increased fame came increased scrutiny about his apparent penchant for plastic surgery (he would later swear he'd had but two nose jobs), about his quirks (he once supposedly bid on the Elephant Man's bones), about his bank account (his lavish spending and litigious ways raised speculation that he is teetering on insolvency) and about his habit of surrounding himself with young boys.
The 35-year-old bachelor took a wife, Lisa Marie Presley, in 1994, shortly after the original child-molestation case forever damaged his career, especially in the U.S. market. The two divorced in 1996. Later that same year, Jackson wed Debbie Rowe, a nurse at his dermatologist's office.
Rowe bore Jackson two children, but as she told jurors during the trial, the two never shared a home. The couple divorced in 1999. Jackson welcomed a third child, believed to be the product of a surrogate, to his growing family in 2002.
It was the youngest child, known as Blanket, whom Jackson dangled over a hotel balcony in Germany in November 2002. The incident and its aftermath were captured on tape by Bashir, then traveling with the entertainer.
The Zelig figure of the Jackson case, Bashir would become the first witness at the singer's trial.
To another journalist, 60 Minutes' Ed Bradley, Jackson denounced the latest allegations that put his life and livelihood in jeopardy.
"Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrists," Jackson said in that December 2003 interview. "I would never hurt a child."