drbill:
I spent the past four days in a home without a TV or radio and it was wonderful... until I saw the news headlines in the papers the next day. Didn't bother to read them. I think he is guilty as hell, but that the case was botched and he got off because the prosecutor picked a poor victim to try. At least my son is way too old (20) to be of interest to him.
Based on my education, training and several years experience as a child protection social worker, it's my opinion that MJ displays classic signs of pedophilia and I have a really hard time believing that he is not guilty. Sadly, the likely hood is extremely high that pedophiles will reoffend.
it's my opinion that molestation trials almost always come down to having to convince the jury that the child is telling the truth. The legal sufficency for a convinction in almost all jurisdictions relies solely on the child saying it happened. The defense stategy is then almost universally to discredit the witness - something that works against the defendant if they get to aggressive and slander or re-victimize the alledged victim as jusries tend to not like that sort of thing by the defense. To take advantage fo this, the prosecution should have limited the evidence and the witnesses to only what they needed - the kids testimony and a minimum of supporting testimony. Bringing in mom, who's judgment was already obviously bad for letting what happened happen in the first place, was a major mistake as her lack of credibility rubs off on the kid. They would have been far better off letting the defense take the risk of calling her as then they could have implied all sorts of things about the credibility of a defense witness.
The irony here is that MJ was smart enough in the first place to pick victims with dysfunctional parents who by their very nature may try to take financial advantage of the situation (mostly in small and meaningless ways), will be less likely to report the abuse, and will not be credible in court, particularly when their reaction to ready access to money is made public. The victim and the victim's family in this case is exactly the what I would expect an intelligent pedophile to prey upon. In my opinion he also threw in the occasional high profile and very credible child star that he did not molest as insurance in case he ever needed a credible child witness. The prosecution needed to take this into account and develop their strategy accordingly.
Not sequestering the jury was also absolutely bizarre as it left the jury exposed to a huge amount of public and media commentary on the case. Had MJ been convicted, the defense would have jumped all over that in filing appeals.
But since this happened in the land of fruits and nuts, we had to have a 70 some odd day trial and bring in about 100 times more testimony that was neccesary. If MJ had done this locally in South Dakota, the trial would have taken a week to ten days tops and he would have almost certainly been convicted.
Celebrity trials like the OJ trial and now the MJ trial have done a lot to undermine people's confidence in the court system. With each event like this it gets harder and harder for the average American to believe in their court system.
