Thread twelve underway... So what do you think? Has the defense created resonable doubt?

This is our twelfth thread on this trial... crazy!

As always, Love the pics, please don't re-post 'em, slows things down for those who have dial-up!


Enjoy and discuss!

First!

...and the last one on the previous thread! I rule!

calldapplwondery83 said:

pizza!!

Fuck. I was so close to being first

Not Guilty

im so nervous! its all gonna be over soon. either found innocent or guilty. how will everyone be feeling on the day of the verdict?
[Edited 5/21/05 19:23pm]

hellomoto said:

Not Guilty

hellomoto said:

to riot or not to riot..that is the question....

sosgemini said:

hellomoto said:

I'm nervous for MJ. I don't think he's guilty but I think it could be a hung jury.

YES

June7 said:

You know, I actually wanted to edit my post on the last thread and suddenly it said "You cannot reply to a closed thread", so my quick wit knew you closed the thread and would open another one. Hit 'refresh' till it came up.
That's my secret but...

Mike´s INNOCENT! They can´t put him to jail.

If they find him quilty I am flying to America to kick the jury´s and judge´s asses!!!

jn2 said:

Try HELL yes. And they did it WEEKS ago.

June7 said:

Are you kidding? of course they have, but then so have the prosecution.

Marrk said:

Jacko's Receipts Could Exonerate Him
Monday, May 23, 2005
By Roger Friedman

The "captors" of Janet Arvizo's kids, whom Arvizo called "The Killers" on the stand, not only bought them books but also paid to replace their lost schoolbooks as well. And they did this during what turned out to be the Arvizo family's last week at Michael Jackson's Neverland Valley Ranch in March 2003.

I can tell you this because I have copies of the receipts. I can also tell you that on her last full day of "captivity," Arvizo sat down to lunch with her "captor" Vincent Amen at the Outback Steak House in Los Angeles. This was after she'd won a judgment in family court against her ex-husband and knew that her adventure at Neverland was hours from being over. After six long weeks, Jackson wanted her and her kids gone.

On March 11, 2003, Arvizo hunkered down to a meal of prime rib. Amen had roast beef. The time stamp on the check was 12:53 p.m.


I have more receipts from Arvizo's stay with Jackson, some of which I've written about, others that have just been uncovered. They certainly add to the testimony given by many witnesses: The conspiracy case against Jackson is not credible. But will the jury hear about these receipts? Will they hear about the schoolbooks?

This could be a big issue, since Arvizo's captors wouldn't have been buying schoolbooks for kids they were getting ready to ship off to Brazil. Few kidnappers plan on making sure their charges have accelerated high school degrees.

To wit: Barnes & Noble receipt on March 4, $32.37, notation "Books for [the accuser's sister]." Barnes & Noble receipt, March 6, $29.79, notation "Books for [Arvizo boys]." Also March 6, $123.50 to John Burroughs Middle School, receipt for replaced textbooks.

The boys' books? Two copies of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and one "Vocabulary Workshop." The girl's? "Roadmap to the California High School Exit Exam" and "How to Prepare for the California High School Proficiency Exam." Perhaps bolstered by her relationship with 22-year-old Neverland chef Angel Vivanco, the girl was planning a future even her mother didn't know about.

The receipts, entered into evidence last week but not shown yet to the jury or public, are a detailed accounting of money spent on the Arvizos, mostly by Amen and reimbursed by Marc Schaffel. Countering Arvizo's testimony that the family was allowed "one meal a day," the receipts are a black and white roadmap of several meals and snacks every day.

The Arvizos had quite a taste for fast food, dining frequently at Hot Dog on a Stick and similar franchises. It's enough to give the makers of "Super Size Me" indigestion.

Tomorrow: As the defense plans to rest its case, we still have a lot of questions. And what about the witnesses who never showed up? Why did we never see phone records from Neverland indicating who the family called while they stayed there?

Plus: Why well-executed graphics displays will be needed to show the jury a timeline not only for the Arvizos pre-Jackson activities, but a day-to-day schedule for February and March 2003.

Did Dickerman Dicker With Accuser's Mom?

So much testimony, so little time to analyze it. But let's ask ourselves: Why didn't attorney William Dickerman tell the mother of Michael Jackson's accuser to leave Neverland right away when she went to see him on Feb. 21 and again on Feb. 25, 2003? Maybe he didn't want her to.

On Feb. 21, Janet Arvizo told Vinnie Amen, Jackson's assistant, that she had to stop by the Laugh Factory in Hollywood and see owner Jamie Masada. What Amen didn't know is that Arvizo and Masada had set up for Masada's lawyer, Dickerman, to be there. It was the first of two meetings Dickerman would have with Arvizo in a period of four days.

The second meeting on Feb. 25 was held in Dickerman's Century City office. Arvizo attended that meeting even though she was on her way to a hotel in the suburb of Calabasas for five days of shopping with her kids and Amen.

Later, she claimed in her testimony that she was held against her will in Calabasas from Feb. 25 to March 2. But she didn't mention in the meeting, which her boyfriend also attended, that she was in the middle of being "kidnapped."

In other words: Arvizo would have us believe that she met with her lawyer to discuss her rights in a video broadcast two weeks earlier, but not about Jackson holding her hostage at that moment.

More important: Why didn't Dickerman call the police if the Arvizo family was being held hostage or feeling threatened on the 21st or the 25th? Certainly when Arvizo was in Dickerman's office en route to Calabasas on the 25th, he could have put an end to her "misery." He didn't. And that's where the head scratching begins.

And when did Dickerman decide to call Larry Feldman, the attorney who negotiated a $20 million settlement for Jackson's 1993 accuser? Some people theorize that Dickerman called Feldman immediately after his meeting with Arvizo on the 21st. He says he did it later.

Dickerman was never really asked any of these questions during cross-examination. He claimed that his main task after meeting Arvizo on the 21st and 25th was to determine her rights concerning her kids' appearance in the Martin Bashir documentary.

In other words: Arvizo, feeling her family was threatened and she was being held against their will, met with a lawyer, told him nothing about the situation and returned to it willingly. Dickerman, knowing that Arvizo was meeting with him on the sly, apparently felt no duty as an officer of the court to intervene.

On March 26, two weeks after the Arvizos were ejected from Neverland, Dickerman said he wrote to attorney Mark Geragos about retrieving Arvizo's possessions. He didn't mention in those letters that the family had been kidnapped or that the kids had been drinking at Neverland. He only wanted their passports and inexpensive furniture returned. It simply does not make sense.

To complicate the situation a bit more: On Feb. 16, Arvizo was driven to her apartment by Amen. Amen found a business card slipped under the door from Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon there, who'd seen the TV special in which Arvizo's son held hands with Jackson, according to sources. This column reported this little known fact almost a year ago. Yet, no one has ever brought this up in court. No one has ever asked: When did Sneddon first contact Arvizo? When did Arvizo first speak to him? Was it concurrent with her Dickerman meetings? And if so, why didn't Sneddon spring her from her kidnapping?

Here's a theory, and one that for some reason the defense has not tried out: Dickerman could have told Arvizo to return to Neverland and continue gathering "evidence" with an eye toward a civil suit. It's the only thing that makes sense. Once the rebuttal footage had been shot and the family services interview had taken place, Jackson's camp had no reason to keep the Arvizos around.

If the counter argument is that they planned to send them to Brazil, even that doesn't make sense. No one bothered to ask in court about the dates, but the Arvizos were in Calabasas for three days before they even applied for visas on Feb. 28, 2003. If the Jackson camp was so keen to get the family out of the country, wouldn't they have started the paperwork immediately?

Instead, Amen and Frank Tyson took the Arvizos shopping, fed them fast food and took them to the movies — something else the defense never asked Arvizo about on the stand — before even bothering to apply for passports and visas.

Even though I agree that reasonable doubt has been created, if only because the prosecution's timeline fell apart 2 weeks into the case, here's what I am afraid of:

1. This is California, where old grudges die hard. This sounds crazy, and it might be, but could the jury convict MJ as payback for OJ?

2. If the jury believes that MJ did any of the things he's accused of past or present, they may convict him anyway.

3. The jury may convict him because if he looks that creepy, and acts that weird, he must be a pervert.

namepeace said:

Frightful, isn't it?

Maid Testifies About Jackson Entry Alarm

By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer
4 minutes ago

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - One of Michael Jackson's former housekeepers testified Monday in his child molestation trial that an alarm that sounds when anyone enters the pop star's bedroom suite had the same volume during a test recorded last year as it did in previous years.

The maid's testimony was aimed at discrediting an account by the accuser's brother, who testified he twice entered the two-story master bedroom suite at Jackson's Neverland ranch and while on the stairs inside the suite he saw Jackson molest his brother on the upstairs bed.

The defense contends the events related by the brother never happened and seeks to show that the alarm would have alerted Jackson that someone was entering the suite.

The maid, Maria Gomez, was questioned about a test conducted by a defense witness to measure the volume of the alarm, which is a chime similar to those at the doors of convenience stores.

She told defense attorney Robert Sanger that the alarm sounded at the same volume during the test earlier this year as it has for the last several years.

Prosecutors suggest that the chime may have played at a louder volume during the test than it did at the time Jackson's accuser and the boy's brother were staying at Neverland in February and March 2003. The prosecution also claims the alarm is quiet enough to have gone unheard upstairs.

In the videotape recording of the test by videographer Laurence Zimmer the alarm is clearly audible in the upstairs portion of the bedroom. Gomez was present for the test.

The testimony began what is expected to be the final week of the defense case.

Comedians Jay Leno and Chris Tucker are expected to testify before the defense ends.

The defense had been expected to last into June, but prosecutors said in court Friday that the defense has indicated it may rest by Tuesday. Defense attorneys did not comment.

Leno was expected to take the stand Tuesday to testify about a phone call the defense says he received from Jackson's accuser. Defense attorneys say the boy's family targeted Leno and other celebrities, including Jackson, in attempts to get money.

Tucker, who like Jackson befriended the boy while he was battling cancer, was to testify about spending time with the family. They took several trips together, including one to visit Jackson in Miami in February 2003.

It was unclear when Tucker would testify.

Tucker's girlfriend, Hollywood casting assistant Azja Pryor, testified last week about her experiences with the family. She said the boy's mother complained in March 2003 that Jackson's associates were trying to keep her family away from Jackson.

The timing is significant because Jackson is accused of molesting the boy in late February or early March of 2003.

Jackson, 46, is also accused of plying the then-13-year-old boy with alcohol and conspiring to hold his family captive to get them to rebut a documentary in which the singer is seen holding hands with the boy and acknowledges sleeping with children. Jackson, however, says the practice is non-sexual.

Once the defense rests, prosecutors will present their rebuttal. Defense attorneys will then respond, followed by closing arguments and deliberations.

On Friday, former Jackson attorney Mark Geragos testified that he ordered an investigator to track the family because he feared they were plotting to bilk money from his client.

http://news.yahoo.com/new...jackson_12

The defense played a vid of the police raid showing the alarms going off, and they were loud as hell

My note

Accuser's Mom Said to Defraud Welfare

By LINDA DEUTSCH, AP Special Correspondent

13 minutes ago

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - The mother of Michael Jackson's accuser committed fraud when she did not disclose on a welfare application that her family received funds from a $152,000 lawsuit settlement 10 days earlier, a welfare official testified Monday in Jackson's child molestation trial.

Jackson's defense, which seeks to show that the accuser's family has a history moneymaking schemes, also called an accountant to show that the family dined, shopped and had other expenses at a cost of $7,000 to Jackson during a week they were allegedly being held captive.

Mercy Manriquez, an employee of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, testified that she was the intake worker on the mother's Nov. 15, 2001, application for assistance which said that the woman had no other sources of income and no assets.

Manriquez testified that a person who willfully excludes sources of income from the forms that were signed by the accuser's mother is guilty of fraud.

"Would it be fraud to fail to disclose it at this point?" defense attorney Robert Sanger asked.

"Yes it would be," the witness said.

Before the mother testified in the trial she invoked Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on the welfare issue and was not required to testify about it. However, Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville allowed the defense to present records and testimony about it to jurors.

The records included a statement of facts filed on Nov. 15, 2001, and a second document filed on Oct. 23, 2002, which was identified as the woman's "yearly affirmation" that her situation remained the same and she still needed welfare payments.

Jurors also saw checks for $769 each in monthly payments which were deposited in the bank account of the woman's then-boyfriend who is now her husband.

The accountant, Mike Radakovich, said he was hired by the defense to analyze records submitted to him including a summary of the settlement of a lawsuit against J.C. Penney.

Radakovich said the total amount of the settlement was $152,000, of which portions went to each of the woman's three children, her former husband and to attorneys' fees.

The mother's share was $32,307, which was deposited into an account for the benefit of one of her sons, who then had cancer, Radakovich testified. That boy would later become Jackson's accuser.

Within days, however, Radakovich said, most of the money had been withdrawn and was used to buy a cashier's check for $29,000 written to a Ford dealership.

The mother testified previously in the trial that she considered buying a car with those funds but never did. There was no evidence that the check was ever cashed.

Deputy District Attorney Gordon Auchincloss objected to the admission of all of the documents, suggesting their authenticity was insufficiently supported.

The judge initially did not admit them as evidence but said the defense could show them to jurors and could use them in final arguments.

Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in February or March 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the family captive to get them to make a video rebutting a damaging TV documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson," which aired in the U.S. on Feb. 6, 2003.

In the documentary, the boy held hands with Jackson and the pop star said he let children sleep in his bed but it was an innocent, non-sexual practice.

The accounting testimony also showed Quicken bookkeeping entries for Jackson's Neverland Valley Entertainment Co., which picked up the bills for expenses during a period when the family was staying at a hotel in the San Fernando Valley.

Purchases were made at a luggage store and for clothing from a Camarillo, Calif., shopping center. Charges included clothes from Banana Republic, Pacific Sunwear, Levi's and Anchor Blue. For one two-day period the shopping total was $4,800, according to the records.

In other testimony, one of Jackson's former housekeepers testified that an alarm that sounds when anyone enters the pop star's bedroom suite had the same volume during a test recorded this year as it did in previous years.

Maria Gomez's testimony was aimed at discrediting an account by the accuser's brother, who testified he twice entered the two-story master bedroom suite at Neverland and while on the stairs inside the suite he saw Jackson molest his brother on the upstairs bed.

The defense contends the events related by the brother never happened and seeks to show that the alarm would have alerted Jackson that someone was entering the suite.

Gomez was questioned about a test conducted by a defense witness to measure the volume of the alarm, which is a chime similar to those at the doors of convenience stores.

Prosecutors suggest that the chime may have played at a louder volume during the test than it did at the time Jackson's accuser and the boy's brother were staying at Neverland. The prosecution also claims the alarm is quiet enough to have gone unheard upstairs.

___

Associated Press Writer Tim Molloy contributed to this report.

Here´s my baby.






looks a bit tired, but GREAT!!

Is mike heading to fashion court

lilgish said:

If he is then capital punishment isn't out of the question.

yeah, you´re right. he could keep the "decoration" off.

PLease god, don´t make this happen, don´t make this happen!!!!

namepeace said:

and he was on a good two week streak....what happened? who let him dress himself?