SANTA MARIA, Calif., March 16 -- How many ways to catalogue a man's hidden stash of girlie magazines? Jurors are finding out, the slow way, after a sometimes tedious two days in Michael Jackson's trial on child-molestation charges.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case spent close to six hours Wednesday questioning four Santa Barbara County sheriff's detectives about their search of Jackson's Neverland Ranch home in late 2003. Prosecutors submitted a half-dozen more examples of the singer's collection of "commercially available adult material" (the court forbids calling it "pornography," a subjective term), a process that can take 15 minutes for each item.
Michael Jackson leaves the courthouse this past week.
(Reuters)
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_____Photos and Multimedia_____
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Jackson Special Report
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Photo Gallery: Scenes from the trial.
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Photo Gallery: Michael Jackson's curious career.
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Video: Michael Jackson, apparently suffering from some sort of back ailment, is escorted into court after the judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
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Video: Michael Jackson arrives for the first day of his child molestation trial.
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Video: Journalists and Jackson fans outside the Santa Maria, Calif., courthouse.
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In cross-examination earlier Wednesday, lead investigator Steve Robel, a county sheriff's sergeant, testified that Jackson's accuser told him he was molested by the singer between five and seven times sometime in February and March 2003. But the boy could recall specific details for only two of the alleged incidents, failing to "articulate exactly" the other occurrences, Robel said.
Jackson defense attorney Robert Sanger questioned Robel about an interview he conducted in July 2003 with the accuser, now 15, in which he told the boy, "You're doing the right thing here. He's the one who's done wrong [and] we're going to try to bring him to justice."
After quoting Robel in the interview, Sanger wondered aloud if that was an acceptable statement from an investigator "with an open mind who's trying to find the truth. Is it?"
Robel defended his interviewing methods, saying it's important to let children know they are doing the right thing when they offer accounts of being abused.
As the day wore on, the four detectives were questioned about the kinds of material they found at Neverland and where they found it. Jurors saw a photograph of the inside of the drawer of Jackson's night table, where there was an adult magazine and two photographs. One appeared to be a Polaroid photo of a young child sitting in a metal washtub with a puppy, in the kind of quaint pose you'd see on a calendar.
The prosecution has charged Jackson with showing pornography to his accuser and the accuser's younger brother; the defense has claimed the boys went into Jackson's bedroom without permission when the singer wasn't around and looked at the magazines, titles of which include Penthouse and Barely Legal.
Some of the materials appeared questionable to investigators, but don't exactly fit the bill as illicit: "Pimps Up, Ho's Down," a DVD found in Jackson's home, is a documentary. "The Chop Suey Club" is a book of photographs by Bruce Weber, a fashion photographer for Vanity Fair, Abercrombie & Fitch and others.
Looking ahead in the Jackson trial, Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville spoke with attorneys during one jury break about the prosecution's attempts to bring Jackson's past brushes with abuse allegations into testimony. Under California law in molestation cases, prosecutors can introduce accusations, settlements or other witness accounts, such as Jackson's $20 million out-of-court settlement in 1994 with a past accuser's family, even though Jackson was never charged or convicted.
Melville "wants a full hearing on that, with live testimony, not affidavits," MSNBC legal analyst Anne Bremner told reporters Wednesday. "It would be like a little mini-trial within the trial [and] it could be about any of the [past] alleged victims. This is our universe of possibilities."
