An Odd Defence
The prosecution rested on 4 May 2005 after forty-five days. The defence began presenting its case the next day.
Ironically, some of us felt that the defence’s witnesses were even more damaging than the prosecution’s! For instance, the first witnesses were Wade Robson and Brett Barnes, two young men called by Michael’s attorney, Tom Mesereau, to testify that as youngsters they had both slept in the same bed as Michael. My stomach twisted into knots as they told their stories. The point was that in Michael Jackson’s world, it was okay to sleep with little kids – it didn’t mean you were having sex with them, it just meant you were having fun, sleep-overs. Never mind the inappropriate nature of the whole thing or the fact that most reasonable people would find it appalling and, at the very least, suspicious.
On the second day of testimony, Joy Robson, Wade’s mother, testified about walking her ten-year-old son across the street from the hotel in which they were staying to a condo in which Michael was staying and dropping him off there to spend the night with Jackson. And, as far as she was concerned, it was all innocent. Why? Because she knew Michael loved children. ‘Michael Jackson is a very special person,’ she said. ‘Unless you know him, it’s hard to understand him. He’s not the boy next door.’ I was more than a little perplexed. I couldn’t imagine that the jury would think this kind of thing made sense. But still, Joy seemed like a reasonable person, so maybe it did. In Michael’s world, what made sense and what seemed like lunacy often converged into a reality that was not easy to describe.
At one point, Joy Robson recalled tension and jealousy among the boys who were sleeping with Jackson, including actor Macaulay Culkin and his brother Kieran. There was also jealousy among the families: Robson said she told June Chandler that ‘there was tremendous emotional impact on the children when Michael moved on to another boy’. Moreover, she said she thought that June was ‘a gold digger’ who wanted to be ‘mistress of Neverland’.
Marie Lisbeth Barnes testified that her son, Brett, spent dozens of nights in bed with Michael, even accompanying the pop star on concert tours to South America and Europe. During the tours, Brett Barnes and Michael would share one hotel room, while the rest of the Barnes family stayed in another, the mother said. ‘You just feel when you can trust someone and not trust someone, and I have complete trust in him,’ Barnes explained. Was I the only one who thought this did not speak well of Jackson? I didn’t think so. Looking around the room, I saw a lot of confused faces. Then, when Brett’s sister Karlee said that Michael slept with her brother for a total of ‘365 days’ over a two-year period when Brett was ten or eleven years old, I threw my hands in the air and decided that this defence made no sense to me at all.
In fact, throughout the defence’s case, there were stories of Michael sleeping with boys in what was maintained to be innocent behaviour. Even Macaulay Culkin was called to the witness stand on the fiftieth day to pretty much testify to the same effect. But in my opinion, the defence was at its best when pointing out inconsistencies in the Arvizos’ stories and in those of the other witnesses against Michael. It was at its worst when trying to make Michael’s inappropriate behaviour sound reasonable and understandable.
It wasn’t all high-stakes melodrama, though. Some memories of Santa Maria actually make me laugh. For instance, I remember the day we were all in court ready for the proceedings to begin when there was a ruckus in the back of the room. It was 3 June 2005, and Tom Mesereau was on the second day of his closing arguments. All heads turned to see three attractive black women trying to make their way to the front of the courtroom – all three were teased, weaved and adorned with clanging jewelry. It was orchestrated chaos; think The Supremes trying to get to the floor-show stage from the back of a crowded nightclub and you’ll get the picture. It was Janet, LaToya and Rebbie making, doubtless, the best entrance of the trial dressed in matching black-and-white outfits. The three Jackson sisters marched up the center aisle in perfect unison, led by Janet as if she’d just said, ‘Okay, girls... let’s hit it. One. Two. Three. Go.’ They sat in the front row as Thomas Mesereau finished his closing argument. ‘It only takes one lie under oath to throw this case out of court by you,’ Mesereau told jurors. ‘And you can’t count the lies here.’ When he was finished, the judge announced that Ron Zonen was about to begin the prosecution’s brief rebuttal. Just then, on cue, all three Jackson sisters stood up, turned around and promptly marched right out of the courtroom.