On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 09:49:08 -0400 "Charles Brown"
<cbrown at michiganlegal.org> writes:
>
>
>
> Michael Pollak
> > ok, on the one hand, it shouldn't matter to a juror that the
> mother of
> > the accuser is irritating.
>
> Waitasecond. The jury didn't not trust her for trivial reasons.
> They
> thought, on very reasonable grounds, that there was a substantial
> chance
> that she was a crook who was lying -- or even pimping her son --
> with the
> express purpose of shaking MJ down.
>
> http://slate.msn.com/id/2120812/
>
> That's not mindless. That's very material to the issue of
> reasonable doubt.
>
> Michael
>
> ^^^^
> CB: Agree , Michael. I was thinking the same thing.
>
> If I might add one more step to your argument: And the jury thereby
> may not
> have believed the _boy's_ testimony that Jackson had molested him.
> The
> mother's congame conduct contributed to undermining the credibility
> of the
> boy's testimony , which is the direct evidence of the crime that
> Jackson was
> charged with. If it was a congame, it could have included the boy
> lying. If
> they doubt the boy's words, there's reasonable doubt on a fact the
> prosecution must prove.
The mother was the prosecution's second most important witness, after the boy himself. Her bizarre conduct on the witness stand went a long way towards discrediting her own testimony and that of her son. And her credibility was not at all helped by the fact that the defense was able to find evidence that she had file false suits in the past against companies like J.C. Penny and had otherwise engaged in "grifting type" scams. That supported the defense's contention that she was trying to shake down Michael Jackson.
Also, according to most observers, the boy's own testimony on the witness stand was not very compelling either.
>
>
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