Accuser’s brother admits lying
Boy admitted false testimony during JC Penney lawsuit
The Associated Press
March 8, 2005
SANTA MARIA, Calif. - A boy who testified that Michael Jackson molested his brother acknowledged under cross-examination Tuesday that the pop star didn't show him a sex magazine that the prosecution introduced into evidence. The witness also said he lied under oath in a separate civil lawsuit.
Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. showed the 14-year-old witness the copy of Barely Legal magazine dated August 2003. The boy, who left Jackson's Neverland ranch for the last time in March 2003, testified for the prosecution on Monday that the magazine was one of those that Jackson had shown to him and his brother.
Confronted with the dates, the boy said, "I never said it was exactly that one. That's not exactly the one he showed us."
On Monday, District Attorney Tom Sneddon projected the cover of the magazine onto a courtroom screen for the jury to see.
The boy said he had looked at the magazine with Sneddon before it was presented as evidence.
Under questioning by Mesereau, the boy also said he lied under oath in another case when he swore that his mother and father never fought and that his father never hit him. "When you were asked if your dad ever hit you, you said 'never,'" said Mesereau. "Were you telling the truth?"
"No," said the boy, who is the only trial witness so far to testify that molestation occurred.
"Did someone tell you to lie in the J.C. Penney case?" the lawyer asked, referring to a civil lawsuit brought by the boy's mother against the department store company over an encounter with security guards.
"I don't remember," the boy said.
‘I don't remember nothing’
When Mesereau asked him to tell the jury why he lied under oath, the boy said, "I don't remember. It was five years ago. I don't remember nothing."
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the family captive to get them to rebut a damaging documentary in which Jackson said he allowed children to sleep in his bedroom.
Mesereau focused much of his questioning on the lawsuit in which the mother claimed that she was sexually assaulted and the family was beaten by guards after the accuser in the Jackson case left a store with items that had not been paid for. The defense contends the suit shows the family has a history of filing false claims to get money.
The allegations that the father abused the family surfaced later during the parents' divorce.
The 14-year-old boy became a crucial prosecution witness Monday when he testified to actually seeing molestation by walking in on Jackson as he engaged in acts with his sleeping brother in Jackson's bedroom.
Mesereau asked the boy to tell jurors about an alarm system in Jackson's house which alerts the singer when anyone is in the hall outside his bedroom. The boy acknowledged there was an electronic bell and that anytime he was in that hallway the bell went off. "So the two times you claim you saw Michael Jackson touching your brother in bed, that alarm went off?" asked Mesereau.
"Yes," said the boy.
No mention of alarm system
When the boy testified about the alleged molestation on Monday he did not mention any bell or alarm system and said that his brother slept through both incidents, snoring at one point. Mesereau also said that the witness had in the past given a different description of the alleged molestation, including that he once said Jackson touched his brother's bottom during the incidents.
"I never said he touched his butt," the witness aid.
The boy responded to numerous questions about inconsistencies by saying, "I don't know exactly what I said."
Mesereau asked the boy about his testimony that Jackson encouraged him and his brother to use curse words, and the boy said he had never used them before meeting Jackson.
Mesereau then asked him about his J.C. Penney lawsuit deposition in which he described two profane words allegedly used by security guards.
The boy said he spelled out the words while giving the deposition.
The cross-examination began after the prosecution concluded its direct questioning Tuesday by eliciting testimony that Jackson had once issued a warning to the witness and his brother.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7129260
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Is is just me - or does the woman in this begining to sound like the infamous "Manda" ??