Before she met Jackson, the defence argues, Gavin’s mother had written begging letters to numerous celebrities including Jim Carrey and Tyson, seeking money for her son’s medical treatment.
.

MattyJam said:

Tyson is broke though!!!

When the harsh lights beat down on his face for two hours it's going to be just like Margaret Hamilton melting in the Wizard Of Oz.

Yeah, I'd pay to see that.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1512652,00.html

Jackson already eyes world comeback tour
John Harlow, Santa Maria
Star plans return to recoup legal costs of up to £50m as jury gets glimopse of his private Neverland

BY 5am each day, long before the sun rises over his fairytale home Neverland, Michael Jackson has finished his daily dance workout and settled down to choose armbands and trinkets for the day ahead in court.

He pores over 100 secondhand medals, ranging from the Order of Vienna to a chunky golden orb minted by a former king of Swaziland. He tells the staff who help him to dress that the medals “make me strong for the battle to come”.

As an aide makes sure the beleaguered 46-year-old pop star’s tie is perfectly knotted, Jackson is already speaking on his gem-encrusted mobile phone. The first call is often to a New York-based music mogul, Charles Koppelman, with whom Jackson is planning a world tour — provisionally entitled Celebration — to start a few months after the acquittal he prays for on child sex charges.

Business associates say he is buoyed by the belief that music will provide his pathway to redemption in the public eye. His last album, Invincible, sold 8m copies but failed to recoup the costs to his record label, Sony. Jackson is nevertheless determined to stage a lucrative blockbuster tour. He wants to exceed the record £60m his former musical partner Sir Paul McCartney grossed from touring America in 2002.

If Jackson stays out of jail, he will need the money, particularly if he returns to the spendthrift ways portrayed in Martin Bashir’s Granada documentary Living with Michael Jackson, which was broadcast in February 2003 and led to the trial that began last week.

Forbes magazine estimates that over his 40-year career the former child star has earned $500m (£260m). Other magazines have estimated his wealth at between £75m and £150m, including £10m in record royalties last year. However, he is also paying off a £105m loan from Sony, secured against the Beatles’ back catalogue, in which he owns a half share.

US lawyers estimate that the trial could cost him up to £50m. Larry Feldman, who once represented Jordan Chandler — a boy who was paid $15.3m in 1993 not to press abuse charges — said the cost of employing up to 100 legal advisers over the past two years and through a possible appeal next year could reach £40m.

“You have to think of Michael as a corporation fighting for survival,” he said.

On top of that there are extra security teams, including private detectives, and public relations advisers such as Ann Kite, his former consultant, who said in court last week that she was paid £12,000 a month.

Mounting concern about Jackson’s finances has prompted alleged creditors, from Sotheby’s to local suppliers, to start legal action against him.

Koppelman, meanwhile, is working in the background to disentangle his finances and vet offers on the long-mooted sale of the 3,000-acre Neverland estate.

Jurors in the nearby Santa Maria courthouse sat open-mouthed as they watched a 12-minute film shot by police during a raid on the property. It showed Jackson’s bedroom stuffed with toys, dolls and mannequins. “It is difficult to imagine a normal, healthy 46-year-old-man living there,” said one television commentator.

This is the heart of the prosecution case presented by Thomas Sneddon, the 62-year-old district attorney for Santa Barbara county.

Sneddon, a former Vietnam veteran whose tenacity has earned him the nickname of the Bulldog, is a man with a mission: to jail the star he depicts as a monstrous predator. He first investigated Jackson in 1993, when he received reports of abuse from Chandler’s family, and was furious when the singer used his fortune to avert a comprehensive police investigation.

Sneddon kept seeking witnesses to the abuse — earning condemnation from Jackson as a “cold, cold man” in a 1997 song, DS, which ends with the sound of a bullet. Police, worried about deranged fans, have stepped up security at Sneddon’s home.

The Bulldog got his second chance to sink his teeth into Jackson when Bashir filmed him holding hands with a 13-year-old cancer patient, Gavin Arvizo, and proclaiming it was normal to share a bed with boys.

Sneddon demanded an examination of Gavin by social workers and psychologists, and the child alleged that Jackson had repeatedly abused him in his locked bedroom at Neverland.

The evidence Sneddon collected at Neverland, from pornographic magazines to DNA samples, is now being put to the Santa Maria jury in the new millennium’s first “trial of the century”. Jackson could face 24 years in prison if convicted of 10 charges of abusing a minor, plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold him hostage.

Sneddon’s first significant witness, Gavin’s 18-year-old student sister Davellin, calmly recounted how she saw Jackson give him wine disguised in a fizzy drink can. The pair would then disappear for up to 30 minutes at a time into locked rooms, she said, after which Gavin would “act weird.”

But she also admitted, under cross-examination, that she initially told social services her brother had not been molested.

The concession was wrung by Thomas Mesereau, Jackson’s defence lawyer who is known as the Fox after a series of unexpected pro bono victories in the American Deep South in which he rescued poor black men from death row.

He also secured the acquittal of Jackson’s friend, the boxer Mike Tyson, on a rape charge.

His main target will not be Gavin or his brother Star, who claims to have witnessed some of the alleged abuse, but their mother, who has remarried and is now confusingly named Janet Jackson. Mesereau claims she turned Gavin against Michael Jackson in a failed blackmail plot.

Before she met Jackson, the defence argues, Gavin’s mother had written begging letters to numerous celebrities including Jim Carrey and Tyson, seeking money for her son’s medical treatment.

Mesereau told the court that when she finally received a £14,000 cheque from Louise Palanker, a comedian, part of it was spent on a large television.

Mesereau said Janet had used fabricated evidence to sue a supermarket chain, alleging that its security staff had manhandled her, and that she had also illegally claimed social security payments. Calling her a “shakedown artist”, he said Janet had been preparing to blackmail the star when Sneddon intervened.

Mesereau is understood to have a back-up plan if the witnesses fail to crumble and if he decides he cannot trust Jackson on the witness stand. He will then consider producing psychiatrists to argue that the star is fixated with children but has no sexual interest in them.

Another strategy has already been abandoned by the Fox: he will not pretend that Jackson is “normal”. On Friday, as tears flowed down the star’s heavily made-up face during the cross-examination of Davellin, the chances of any juror dancing to that tune seemed remote.

Fucking Hypocrite!

"I'll never tour again"

biznitch, sometimes i really really hate him!

Luv4oneanotha said:

And then you get back to thinking about making hot monkey love with him.

VoicesCarry said:

cute...
i would fire back...
but your Canadian... ::rim shot::

Luv4oneanotha said:

Uh, yeah, that makes no sense, since I'm in Canada for school only.

VoicesCarry said:

Canada for school?


Now that makes totally no sense!!!!!

Luv4oneanotha said:

Let's see:

-lower tuition
-better institutions
-cheaper rent

BINGO.

VoicesCarry said:

You can keep tellin yourself that

VoicesCarry said:

You can keep tellin yourself that

Where do you go to school Voices?

Luv4oneanotha said:

Yeah, I guess if it ain't true it's certainly less delusional than the Michael Jackson hype you buy into.

However, my bank balance tells me it's true. And I don't argue with that.

VoicesCarry said:

See hype is something everyone buys into...
when its the minority, its a Minority Opinion...

and what does MJ have to do with anything?

We both essentially have the same opinion about him...
your just more conservative, and i'm more liberal

Luv4oneanotha said:

I'm sorry, were we having a serious conversation here?

VoicesCarry said:

Its hard to tell...
i believe they call that a "Climax"

Luv4oneanotha said:

No, that's what you get when you see a photo of MJ's pasty pale tail.

VoicesCarry said:

ahhh so you've had many climax's i imagine?

You two should fuck.