Defense Will Seek Delay in Jackson Trial

Claiming they are swamped with potential evidence that prosecutors were slow in handing over, Michael Jackson’s defense attorneys next week will ask a judge to postpone the pop star’s child-molestation trial, according to court documents.

The trial, which was initially set to begin in September, is now scheduled to start Jan. 31.

Lawyers in the case are under a strict gag order, and defense attorneys would not say how long a continuance they plan to request from Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville.

Adamant about moving the trial along, the judge sharply cut short a previous defense attempt for a continuance.

This time, however, Jackson’s lawyers will probably bolster their request by citing a number of new circumstances.

Earlier this month, Santa Barbara County authorities again searched Jackson’s Neverland ranch, securing a saliva sample for DNA testing and examining the pop star’s security and telephone systems.

Jackson’s lawyers will challenge the warrants used in the search, court filings indicate.

In addition, the defense must sift through about 10,000 pages of investigative reports and grand jury testimony related to accusations from 1993 that Jackson had molested a teenage boy.

Whether any of that material will be allowed as evidence in the singer’s upcoming trial is to be determined in hearings next month.

Defense lawyers have said that prosecutors were late in producing a mountain of material from the earlier case, which was dropped after a multimillion-dollar settlement with the boy and his family.

Prosecutors replied that they shared evidence as soon as was possible with Jackson’s lawyers, who, they said, were themselves slow to turn over evidence in the discovery process.

Other evidence requiring time-consuming analysis includes computers seized from Neverland and from the office of a Beverly Hills private detective who worked for Mark Geragos, Jackson’s former attorney.

According to published reports, forensic evidence in the case includes fingerprints of both Jackson and his alleged victim on a pornographic magazine found in a locked briefcase at Neverland.

Prosecutors will probably argue that Jackson used the magazine to arouse the boy, according to sources close to the case.

And Jackson’s defense team may say the singer locked the magazine away after finding the boy with it.

Jackson was indicted by a local grand jury in April on charges of molesting a 12-year-old boy with leukemia and then trying to cover it up.

Jackson’s defense has indicated in court filings that it would challenge the procedures that were used to select members of the citizen’s panel.

One of his attorneys, Robert M. Sanger of Santa Barbara, last year successfully argued that the county’s jury selection procedure unfairly limited the number of minority trial jurors.

However, the state Supreme Court earlier this month rejected that conclusion by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Frank Ochoa.

In addition, a different method was used to select grand jurors in the Jackson case, according to both Sanger and Santa Barbara court officials.