On the Stand, Jackson's Past?

Judge Weighs Evidence Of Alleged Misdeeds

Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon wants to introduce earlier incidents of Michael Jackson's alleged sexual contact with minors, claiming a "propensity" by Jackson to commit such acts. (Pool Photo Aaron Lambert Via AP)

SANTA MARIA, Calif. -- Years before Michael Jackson even met the boy who now accuses him of sexual assault, he was dogged by troubling rumors about his relationships with children.

Many were mere suspicions, gleaned from the eccentric public behavior of a grown man who stocked his Neverland Ranch with toys and attended showbiz events hand-in-hand with child stars. The only time Jackson was publicly accused of anything, he was never charged -- never even arrested -- though he reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the boy's family. There were whispers of other incidents, but if any other child leveled a claim, it remained a largely private matter.

In most courtrooms across the country, Jackson's questionable past would be considered just that: something from the past, irrelevant to the case at hand. Even if he had been convicted of a crime, that information would be kept from the jury as it tried to determine his guilt or innocence. No matter what the court of public opinion says, in the court of law, his slate would be wiped clean.

But not necessarily in California.

A state law enacted almost 10 years ago allows evidence from a defendant's past to be introduced in court to help prove new allegations of sexual offenses by showing they are part of a pattern or "propensity" to commit such acts. And it may just allow Jackson's past to go on trial with him. Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville will rule Monday, under a controversial provision known as Evidence Code 1108, whether to allow jurors to hear testimony about earlier, unrelated incidents in which prosecutors allege Jackson may have molested children.

The 1996 amendment to the state's evidence code upended one of the traditional standards of the law: the guarantee that trials would center on a defendant's alleged crime and not on his character. Lawmakers justified the exception by arguing that sex offenders are a different kind of criminal, ones with a hard-wired compulsion to rape or molest again. The law allows testimony from alleged previous victims -- not only from cases that led to convictions but those in which the defendant was never investigated or charged.

It has been hotly opposed by defense attorneys, who say it violates the alleged sex offenders' constitutional right to due process by treating them differently from other defendants.

If Melville permits the propensity evidence in the Jackson case, it could dramatically change the course of the trial. Prosecutors would most likely call the boy whose 1993 accusations led to a $20 million settlement -- and possibly other alleged victims.

One observer says it would be "devastating" to Jackson's defense, which has recently scored points by showing the young accuser to have told conflicting stories: "If you throw in the prior evidence, I think the jurors will completely overlook the problems in the boy's testimony," says Laurie L. Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "Then Michael Jackson is portrayed as a serial child molester, and jurors will be very reluctant to let him loose again."

In a motion filed in December, prosecutors said they would seek to bring evidence of seven prior incidents in which Jackson allegedly had sexual contact with a child. (Some media reports have raised the possibility of seven prior alleged victims coming to the stand, but a defense motion maintained that only one is involved.)

The alleged victim that prosecutors are most likely to call upon is the boy, now in his mid-twenties, who accused Jackson in 1993 of leading him through a series of escalating sexual encounters in overnight visits over four months. Santa Barbara County officials spent months investigating the case but dropped it when the boy refused to testify.

According to prosecutors and defense attorneys, Evidence Code 1108 has transformed rape and molestation cases in California, making it far easier for the government to prevail in cases that generally lack strong eyewitnesses and tend to pit the word of the victim against that of the accuser.

The propensity argument was put to emotional use last week in the Santa Ana trial of Alejandro Avila, accused of sexually assaulting and murdering 5-year-old Samantha Runnion. Her 2002 abduction received national coverage. Prosecutors opened their case with the testimony of two young girls whom he was found not guilty of molesting in 2001, along with that of a third girl who said Avila molested her five years ago. She never reported the abuse until after he had been arrested in the Runnion case.

"He told me if I told anyone that someone would be killed," the girl told jurors Tuesday, her voice cracking, according to news accounts.