Jackson Defense Accuses Teen of Lying

An attorney for Michael Jackson on Tuesday accused a key witness of fabricating details about alleged acts of child molestation that he said he observed the pop star commit at his Neverland ranch.

In cross-examining the 14-year-old brother of Jackson’s accuser, attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. tried to poke holes in other aspects of the boy’s testimony, including his statement that Jackson showed him, his brother and a friend erotic magazines.

On Monday, a photo of an opened black briefcase was projected on the courtroom wall, with an adult magazine called Barely Legal on top of the stack inside.

Under cross-examination, the boy continued to maintain that Jackson, 46, had taken out the magazines, which were again displayed on the courtroom wall Tuesday.

“But that copy of Barely Legal is dated August 2003,” Mesereau said sharply. “That was months after you and your family left Neverland.”

Denying that he and his brother had dipped into Jackson’s collection on their own, the boy conceded that the ones in the photos might not be “exactly the ones that he showed us.”

Discrediting the boy is especially important to the defense because he is so far the prosecution’s only eyewitness to the alleged sex acts. In addition to child molestation, Jackson is charged with conspiring to hold his alleged victim and his family against their will so that they would say glowing things about the pop star in a video tribute. If Jackson is convicted on all 10 felony counts, he could face 20 years in prison.

On Tuesday, the boy stuck to his earlier testimony that he twice saw Jackson masturbating in bed as the singer fondled his sleeping brother, a cancer patient who was 13 at the time.

The boy denied that he gave a psychologist a different account of one of the 2003 incidents, in which Jackson allegedly rubbed up against the boy’s buttocks.

“I never said that,” the boy asserted. Mesereau offered to show him a transcript of the psychologist’s grand jury testimony, but the boy refused, saying: “I know what I said.”

Ill at ease on the witness stand, the boy shifted uncomfortably as Mesereau brought out inconsistencies in his testimony.

The lawyer attacked the boy’s statement to investigators that Jackson had kept him and his family from knowing the time of day while they were allegedly held captive at Neverland.

“You wanted the sheriff to think you and your family were imprisoned and kept away from clocks,” Mesereau insisted. “That’s why you told them that lie, right?”

The boy denied it. He acknowledged that a hilltop clock tower and other clocks were easily visible from many areas of Jackson’s ranch, but said that some of them didn’t work.

Mesereau tried to cast the boy and his brother as untrustworthy, suggesting that they ran wild around Neverland, trying to pick locks, breaking into the wine cellar and “snooping” through Jackson’s bedroom. The boy denied it.

Initially, he also denied lying in a deposition connected with a lawsuit that his mother filed in 2000 against J.C. Penney Co.

In the suit, the mother alleged that she and her family had been abused and falsely imprisoned by store security guards after being accused of shoplifting. The lawsuit was eventually settled for $152,000, according to Jackson’s attorneys.

In his deposition, the boy, then 10, was asked whether his parents had ever fought, and he said no.

But the Jackson jurors have heard several times about an alleged reign of terror by the children’s father, who allegedly assaulted every member of the family frequently over the couple’s 17-year marriage.

On Tuesday, Mesereau asked the boy whether anyone had told him to lie in his deposition.

“Please tell the jury why you lied under oath,” the lawyer demanded.

“It was like five years ago,” the boy responded, clearly exasperated. “I don’t remember nothing.”

Jurors heard testimony for only three hours Tuesday because of prior commitments made by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville in the afternoon.

Mesereau is to continue his cross-examination today. The next witness is expected to be Jackson’s alleged victim.