Jurors reveal reasons
THE jurors who acquitted Michael Jackson hinted that his accuser's mother had badly damaged the prosecution case.
They admitted they were irritated by the woman, who stared at them throughout her evidence and snapped her fingers.
She shocked the jury of eight women and four men by gibbering and contradicting herself as she claimed her 13-year-old son was molested by Jackson.
Juror No 5, a 79-year-old woman, said: “I disliked it intensely when she snapped her fingers at me.
“I was thinking, ‘Don’t snap your fingers at me, lady’.”
Juror No 10, a 45-year-old supermarket worker who has three children, said she could not understand why the lady had allowed her son to sleep in bed with Jackson.
She said: “As a parent, it’s something you are constantly aware of, every moment of your day you are protective of your children. What mother in her right mind would allow that to happen? To freely volunteer your child to sleep with someone, not so much Michael Jackson, but anyone for that matter. So that is something the mothers are concerned about.”
“There were a lot of things not right there.”
She added: “She said a lot of things that came on very strong. When she said ‘Something was burnt right into her mind,’ I thought, ‘Well, a lot of things were burnt into your mind’.”
Juror No 2 said: “The mother, when she looked at me and snapped her fingers a few times and says, ‘You know how our culture is’ and winked at me, I thought, ‘No, that’s not how our culture is’.”
The foreman, Juror No 1, a 63-year-old retired school counsellor, said they didn’t think the boy's mother was telling the truth. He said: “She was in it for all she could get. She was not credible.”
The foreman said he felt sorry for the boy and added: “He was brought up in an environment where he was taught to lie.
“We had a hard time believing him. There was conflict with his evidence. He told conflicting stories, same as his sibling.”
Another juror said they were confused and irritated by irrational and contradictory statements made by the boy's mother.
She said: “She came on very strong, and when she said that, it burned right there.”
The jury reached their verdict after deliberating for more than 32 hours over seven days. The jury considered nearly 700 pieces of evidence and the testimony of 140 witnesses during the 14-week trial before unanimously clearing Jackson.
But they struggled to identify a single piece of evidence that made their minds up.
Juror No 1 said: “I cannot pinpoint any specific evidence or pick one item which swayed my opinion.
“We had to find him guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and there was nothing to point us into doing that.”
He said he was personally troubled by Jackson sleeping with young boys but refused to be drawn further on his views.
He said: “It does bother me a lot. The jury discussed our feelings and beliefs and we based our judgement on the evidence.”
The jurors said they were determined to view Jackson as a normal person rather than a pop megastar.
Juror No 1 went on: “We had to look at Michael Jackson as an individual, not as a celebrity. After that it was pretty easy.”
Juror No 8, a 42-year-old education assistant, cried as the clerk read out the verdict.
The blonde woman, who admitted on her jury form that there was sexual abuse in her family, said: “After deliberating for as long as we did, the emotions that we go through and just realising that it is over and it’s done and we can go on with our normal lives — it’s very emotional.
“I was not the only one crying. The tissues were getting passed round. It was very emotional because this is a no-win situation for the accuser's family or Michael Jackson.”
The jurors were speaking at a press conference within two hours of their verdict — despite releasing a statement read out by Judge Rodney Melville saying they wanted to “return to our private lives as anonymously as we came”.
Another juror said they were disappointed with the evidence presented against Jackson.
He said: “We expected some better evidence, something more convincing, but it just wasn’t there. You hope that maybe you will find a smoking gun, something you can grab on to one way or another and we had difficulty in finding that.”
Asked whether they thought Jackson had been the victim of an elaborate sting, one said: “The thought was there. You could not help but wonder and things just did not add up when you looked at the timeline.”
Juror No 8 said she felt that as a mother, the values the accuser's mother had taught her children were hard to comprehend. She said: “I would not want any of my children to lie for their own gain.”
The jurors said British reporter Martin Bashir’s controversial documentary, in which Jackson admitted sharing his bedroom with young boys, had not played a pivotal role in their deliberations.
One said: “We realise that it stirred things up and were trying to grasp the reality of what it had done to everyone’s lives.”
And they agreed that after looking at the evidence all 12 were thinking along similar lines on a verdict from the start of their deliberations.
One said: “There was tons of evidence but it always came back to the same thing. It was just not enough.”
family lawyer also blasted the boy's mother for putting the pop superstar “through hell”.
Brian Oxman said she was responsible for the trial — and ultimately responsible for its failure.
He said: “I think that the story was a concoction and it sought to capitalise on what people thought Michael Jackson did, it was not based in reality.
“The mother was the problem from the very beginning and that is what it turned out to be in the final analysis.”
Despite the ordeal, Mr Oxman said the star would not wish revenge on the family.
He said: “I think Michael thinks that his accuser was someone who was misled, and someone who needs to search his heart. Michael is not the kind to wish ill on anyone.”
Sun
