Eight months ago, defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. made a strategic move that may have provided the key to Michael Jackson’s court victory: He hired a new private investigator and told him to focus relentlessly on the accuser’s mother.
Scott Ross had worked on the Robert Blake defense, digging up unsavory items about the actor’s murdered wife. The information allowed defense lawyers to argue that someone other than Blake, who was charged with killing her, had a motive. Moreover, the details gave jurors a reason to dislike the dead woman.
Mesereau wanted a repeat performance, and he gave his investigator a simple, blunt instruction, Ross recalled Monday: “I want you to do to [the mother of the alleged victim] what you did to Bonny Lee Bakley.”
Monday, as the Jackson jurors talked about their deliberations, they made clear how well Mesereau’s strategy had succeeded.
“What mother in her right mind would … just freely volunteer your child to sleep with someone, and not so much just Michael Jackson but anyone, for that matter? That is something mothers are naturally concerned with,” juror Pauline Coccoz of Santa Maria, a 45-year-old mother of three, said at a post-verdict news conference.
Juror Eleanor Cook, a 79-year-old grandmother, spoke of her distaste for the mother’s demeanor. The juror “disliked it intensely when she snapped her fingers at us,” she said. “I thought, ‘Don’t snap your fingers at me, lady.’ “
Juror Susan Rentschler, 52, of Lompoc, said she was “very uncomfortable” with the way the mother kept staring at jurors as she testified.
Mesereau’s strategy triumphed.
Classic bad journalism here. First a claim is advanced — the private investigation of the mother was critical to the success of the defense. Then examples are cited, not one of which validates the claim, then the claim is declared validated. Note that of the supporting evidence, two are actions of the mother in the court room and the other is something that was common knowledge before the trial started. Apparently for these writers, facts are simply baubles to display for which the concept of revelance is … irrelevant.