Judge Rejects Jackson Defense Motions

The judge in the Michael Jackson child-molestation case on Thursday rejected defense requests to toss out the entertainer’s indictment and exclude evidence seized in police raids of his ranch and a private investigator’s office.

Although Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville’s actions are setbacks for Jackson, they are hardly fatal. In interviews, legal experts pointed out that defense attorneys frequently make such motions and frequently lose them.

“It’s not surprising,” said Michael Brennan, a USC law professor who teaches trial skills. “If these motions had been granted, the prosecution might not have been able to proceed. The judge would have had to be substantially persuaded.”

In denying the motions at a pretrial hearing, Melville threw out arguments that Jackson’s lawyers have been making in court for months.

They contended that prosecutors -- particularly Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon -- were so argumentative with certain grand jury witnesses that they tainted the entire hearing.

In the decision issued Thursday, Melville allowed that exchanges between Sneddon and an attorney for the father of Jackson’s accuser “generated an atmosphere of undisguised hostility.”

The judge also found Sneddon antagonistic toward the boy’s father, saying the district attorney needlessly let grand jurors know about the man’s misdemeanor conviction for spousal abuse.

But although the bitter tone set by prosecutors was “regrettable,” Melville wrote, sniping incidents did not blind the grand jury. “They concern tangential points that make no genuine contribution to the fundamental inquiry,” he wrote.

In addition to the alleged molestation, Jackson is charged with participating in a conspiracy to cover it up. Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had failed to establish that the conspiracy had ever existed.

But the judge disagreed, listing a number of alleged circumstances that could reasonably raise suspicion.

He pointed to grand jury testimony indicating that Jackson had staff members threaten his accuser’s family, empty their apartment of possessions and virtually imprison them at his Neverland ranch.

“Innocent explanations are entirely possible,” the judge wrote. “The only issue ... is whether it is reasonable to entertain the belief on the evidence presented that the stated crimes did occur and that the defendant was in some manner responsible for their occurrence. The evidence is sufficient for that purpose.”

Melville was also unswayed by a separate defense motion to suppress the items seized during police searches at Neverland and the Beverly Hills office of Bradley Miller, an investigator who worked for former Jackson attorney Mark Geragos.

The judge disputed defense assertions that the search of Miller’s office had been improper, saying Miller was suspected of crimes, including theft and the detention of the accuser’s family.

The Neverland search was conducted with “thoroughgoing professionalism,” Melville wrote.

He rejected defense claims that the warrant had been so broad that it amounted to nothing more than a fishing expedition.

However, he did exclude 16 pieces of possible evidence out of the 117 items initially seized. Officers had no reasonable suspicion that the excluded items were relevant to the case, he ruled.

A specific list of the confiscated list has not been publicly released. Officials have described them generally as computers, documents, tapes, letters and phone records.

Many legal experts have called the secrecy surrounding the case unprecedented -- a circumstance that frustrated Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson as she tried to gauge the impact of Melville’s decisions.

“The big question is still not answered,” she said. “What did they find? These suppression decisions could be a knockout blow to the defense if there was some kind of smoking gun. But we just don’t know.”

Levenson said the judge’s decisions were not surprising and helped the defense establish grounds for an appeal if Jackson was convicted.

At Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors and defense attorneys accused one another of withholding evidence.

Sneddon denounced defense attorney Steve Cochran’s contention that his office has been too slow to hand over crucial evidence, including the results of forensic tests on unspecified magazines seized at Neverland.