Jackson Jurors to See Video

Over the protests of Michael Jackson’s attorneys, jurors in his child molestation case will view the British documentary in which the pop star admits to a fondness for sleepovers with young boys, a judge ruled Friday.

Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville also ruled that Martin Bashir, the journalist who interviewed Jackson for the documentary, must testify in Jackson’s upcoming trial.

The rulings came in the last of the scheduled pretrial hearings in the more than yearlong case. Jury selection is set to start Monday in a trial that could last five months.

Though Melville handed prosecutors a victory with the Bashir tape, he agreed with Jackson’s defense team on another key point. The judge ruled that Jackson’s alleged victim and his brother -- both now in their mid-teens -- must testify in open court. Prosecutors wanted the boys to appear before the jury only, with an audio feed for spectators in a separate room.

“How would you feel if it were your own child?” asked prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss. “Would you be willing to put them through that just so the public could see their face?”

The boys and their mother have changed their names and live incognito somewhere in California, Auchincloss said, adding that they will be “denigrated and tabloided forever” should their identities become known.

But Theodore Boutrous Jr., an attorney for a media coalition that includes The Times, argued that the public has a right not merely to hear but also to see the accusers in a criminal case.

Jackson’s lawyers insisted that the boys deserved no special treatment, alluding at times to a shoplifting incident and prior sexual experience before the alleged incidents with Jackson.

“They’re not exactly innocent little lambs,” said Tom Mesereau, Jackson’s lead attorney.

Arguing that jurors should see Bashir’s “Living with Michael Jackson,” Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon contended that its broadcast in February 2003 on one of the major U.S. networks panicked Jackson and led him to allegedly hold the boy and his family captive at his Neverland Valley ranch near Los Olivos.

The program “was a catastrophe to Michael Jackson personally, to his career, to his finances and to his future,” Sneddon said. He was shown holding hands with his alleged victim, who was then 12. Later, Jackson isolated the family to get their cooperation in a “rebuttal video,” prosecutors claim.

Bashir’s broadcast would help jurors understand why Jackson allegedly hatched an elaborate conspiracy to cover up his sexual activities with the boy, Sneddon said.

Mesereau cast Bashir as an unethical opportunist who has made millions manipulating the interviews Jackson gave him over a seven-month period.

“This is one of the most inflammatory and highly prejudicial pieces of evidence you could possibly introduce,” Mesereau said.

Mesereau urged the judge to study a tape made by Jackson’s videographer of Bashir’s interviews with the star. He asked that jurors view that as well; Melville said he would consider it.

Bashir’s work was “highly contrived and highly edited,” Mesereau said, pointing out that “Living With Michael Jackson” omitted portions of an interview in which Jackson advocated “a national Children’s Day, like Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.”

Also at issue Friday was the admissibility of what prosecutors called Jackson’s “large collection” of books and magazines featuring nude photos, including some of children.

Prosecutors argue that Jackson used the photos as “grooming material” to arouse young boys and lure them into sexual activities. Fingerprints from Jackson and his young accuser were discovered on one of the magazines, according to prosecutors, but Jackson’s attorneys explained that the star had ripped it from the boy’s hands and locked it away after he caught him with it.

Jackson attorney Brian Oxman said the 17 books at issue were “available at any local bookstore” and 23 of the magazines were collector’s items from 1936. Thirty-two magazines were the sort “you could buy at your corner drugstore,” he said.

Melville ruled that most of the material could be used as evidence, but barred prosecutors from referring to it as obscene or pornographic, or even as “erotica.” His preferred designation was “adult material” or “sexually explicit.”

Melville ruled off-limits two photographs of naked boys that were seized at Neverland during the child-molestation investigation of Jackson in 1993. The boys, who apparently were in suggestive positions, were unidentified.

The judge noted that tempers among the attorneys were getting short as the trial approached. He warned the lawyers against personal attacks, saying, “The world will be watching -- not just Santa Maria, not just California, not just the U.S., but the world.”