LOS ANGELES -- When Michael Jackson appears in the Santa Barbara County courtroom today to formally answer criminal charges that he repeatedly sexually molested a young boy, nobody doubts that the entertainer will enter a plea of not guilty. Then the real courtroom drama will begin.
In remarkable sets of dueling court filings this week, Jackson's defense attorney Mark Geragos and Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas Sneddon go after each other, in such a personal, bitter and often petty way as to suggest that the coming trial seems as much about the two lawyers as the defendant and his then-12-year-old accuser.
Heather Nelson, left, and Krissie Petrovay show their support for Michael Jackson by donning T-shirts Monday in Encino, Calif.
(Jim Ruymen -- Reuters)
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Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville banned cameras from the arraignment (though it is still possible an eventual trial could be televised).
After Jackson pleads guilt or innocence, Melville will then address two issues before the court: whether to issue a gag order on Jackson and the investigators, lawyers and participants in the trial; and whether to release to the news media the documents and evidence used to secure the warrant that allowed the search of the Neverland ranch in November, which led in part to his arrest.
Sneddon is seeking the gag order. In court papers, he decried Geragos's appearances defending his client on "Larry King Live," Geraldo Rivera's show and other programs.
"Attorney Geragos has not been shy about offering his own opinion about the supposed 'financial motive' of the boy identified as the victim," Sneddon wrote. He went on to argue that silencing Geragos and his team would deny the lawyer and Jackson the ability to make their case on the airwaves -- and by extension to prospective jurors. Sneddon noted that Geragos and the prosecutors have been gagged in the Laci Peterson double-homicide case, now heading toward trial (with Geragos defending husband Scott Peterson), and so it should be with Jackson.
Sneddon admits that gagging the players won't stop news coverage. "But experience has shown that when the 'talking heads' on what could be called 'tabloid television' do not have Mr. Geragos or other lawyers and principals to interview, they interview one another and indulge in speculation. That gets old in a hurry. The purveyors of recycled speculation lose their audience without fresh 'information' to fuel the controversy. The enthusiastic participation of a well-known defendant's well-known lawyer in interviews on television is calculated to do just that."
Geragos came back blasting that Sneddon possesses not "one scintilla of evidence" to support the silencing of Jackson and his team.
Instead, Geragos argued that Sneddon's request for a gag order represents a personal attack on Geragos and the "further continuation of the prosecution's unrelenting 10-year mission to create a negative impression of Mr. Jackson."
Then Geragos argued that the gag order was actually intended to "protect [the prosecutors] from themselves." Sneddon, he charges, is suffering from a bad case of "foot in mouth syndrome." He continued: "Virtually every public pronouncement by the prosecution team has been characterized by what could best be described as verbal gaffes, and at worst prosecutorial misconduct."
Geragos charged that it is not his own appearances on "Larry King Live" that could taint a jury, but Sneddon's own "made for TV" search of the Neverland ranch and his ensuing news conferences, as well as the prosecution's alleged leaks to television reporters and the use of a Web site to bolster his own case.
Both the defense and the prosecutor decry what they call the circuslike atmosphere of the molestation case against Jackson.
And so it may be.
In the predawn hours today, buses and cars in "The Caravan of Love" are scheduled to roll out from several cities in California to deliver fans and protesters to a rally outside the Santa Barbara County Superior Court in Santa Maria, Calif., where Jackson will be arraigned.
