MJ in PJs? The Latest Developments

Accuser's Testimony Resumes After Delay

Jackson gets a kiss from his brother Jermaine. (Pool Photo Kimberly White)

SANTA MARIA, Calif., March 10 -- Michael Jackson's attorney turned up the heat Thursday on the teenage boy who has accused the pop star of molestation, suggesting in cross examination that the boy took advantage of Jackson's generosity and made up the abuse.

The legendarily oddball defendant, meanwhile, faced arrest on Thursday morning after showing up to court more than an hour late, in what appeared to be pajama bottoms.

Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville issued a warrant for Jackson's arrest and rescinded his $3 million bail at 8:35 a.m. because Jackson was five minutes late and the jury still had not been seated. Told that Jackson was experiencing "a back problem," Melville told Jackson's defense team that he was suspending the warrant for only one hour.

And so the race was on, with reporters and photographers scurrying breathlessly about the courthouse grounds and shouting into cell phones in a variety of languages, while cable television channels immediately put up "deadline clocks" to see if the singer, who was taken to a hospital 35 miles away in Solvang, would make it to court in time.

When Jackson's entourage arrived about 9:40, the singer emerged looking a bit feeble. He was wearing blue pajama bottoms and sandals, with a white T-shirt and dark sport coat. He turned around and acknowledged a few fans at the gate with his customary wave as he walked slowly inside. After a stop in the bathroom, Jackson sat down in the courtroom at 9:44. (Later, his attorney Brian Oxman said the singer had fallen at home Thursday morning. "He tripped this morning and fell in the early morning hours as he was getting dressed. His back is in terrible pain. He was in terrible discomfort throughout the proceedings.")

Melville summoned Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. to his chambers for a few minutes, and then testimony resumed from the previous day, with the prosecution continuing to walk the boy through his relationship with Jackson and his knowledge of activities at Neverland ranch.

The accuser contradicted a key piece of testimony given earlier by his younger brother: The brother testified that on one occasion, Jackson walked into the bedroom naked in front of both boys, with an erection, and expounded on the normalcy of masturbation.

On Thursday, the accuser said he recalled only that Jackson came up the stairs from the bathroom to the bedroom while unclothed, retrieved something and went downstairs. After being shown his own grand jury testimony by Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon, the accuser said, "Oh, yeah, he said something about it being normal." He didn't say what "it" was. "Me and my brother were kind of like 'Eww' because we never saw a grown man naked before."

Sneddon went back over incidents from 2002 and 2003 that the accuser's brother and sister have already testified about, including the apparently frenetic period in February 2003 when the accuser and his family were summoned by Jackson to a Miami resort hotel on the eve of a network broadcast of British journalist Martin Bashir's documentary about life at Neverland. In that special, Jackson and the boy, then 13, were seen holding hands and talking about how they platonically shared a bed.

But in the weeks after the Miami trip, the boy testified Thursday, his relationship with Michael changed. The singer gave him a watch (entered into evidence Thursday), which the boy said he was told was worth $75,000. The family was not able to leave Neverland, he said, except when they were being driven by Jackson's bodyguards. Preparations were made for the family to travel to Brazil, and the boy told the jury that he did not fill out the passport application with his name, picture and signature on it.

The boy, a cancer survivor, testified that he drank alcohol on many occasions with Jackson -- on the plane from Miami, but also in the wine cellar at Neverland, drinking "wine, vodka and Jim Bean, I think it's called," he said. ("Jim Beam?" Sneddon asked. "Jim Bean," the boy replied, spelling it out at the prosecutor's request: "B-E-A-N.")

"Did you ever tell Mr. Jackson you only had one kidney?" asked Sneddon. "Yes," the boy said. "I told him it was bad for me to drink alcohol and he said it was okay, nothing was going to happen."

The accuser said it was after the Miami trip that Jackson molested him twice while the two were in bed. It began, he said, when "Michael started talking about masturbation. . . . He told me males had to masturbate. . . . If I didn't know how, he would do it for me." After about five minutes of being touched by Jackson, the boy said, "I kind of felt weird and embarrassed about it, and he said it was natural."

A day later, after playing games in Jackson's arcade, the boy said, "The same thing happened again." As he gave his version of what happened in Jackson's bedroom, the boy's voice dropped almost to a mumble.