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Jackson likely to skip grand jury-Reuters

Written by Administrator
Wednesday, 24 March 2004
[b]Jackson likely to skip grand jury[/b] 25.03.2004 1.24 pm LOS ANGELES - Pop star Michael Jackson will almost certainly decline an invitation to testify before the secret grand jury that will consider indicting him on child molestation charges, legal experts said on Wednesday. Though Jackson has already been charged with child molestation, Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon is seeking a grand jury indictment against the 45-year-old entertainer, avoiding a more public preliminary hearing in the sensational case. ... Sources close to the case say that Santa Barbara County prosecutors several weeks ago sent Jackson's attorneys a letter telling them that a grand jury was being convened and offering Jackson a chance to testify. But legal experts said there was almost no chance that Jackson's high-profile lawyers would let him take the witness stand. Jackson's attorneys, who are bound by a gag order issued in the case by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville, could not be reached for comment. "If Michael Jackson were to testify at the grand jury it would simply signal that his lawyers have lost control and that Michael Jackson is completely insane with his own misguided conviction that he can convince anybody of anything," Stan Goldman, a professor at Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles said. "It's never going to happen." Because grand juries are conducted by prosecutors for the purpose of indicting a defendant Jackson would have nothing to gain by testifying and everything to lose. "You have the right to remain silent," Goldman said. "Why give the prosecution even the slightest chance to question you? In the hands of a good cross-examiner even an innocent person can make statements that make them look guilty." High-profile Los Angeles attorney Harland Braun agreed, putting the chances at "close to zero" that Jackson would appear before the Santa Barbara County grand jury. "The problem is, there is not something you can explain easily," he said. "You're going to be denying something somebody else said and its not going to do you any good." Braun said the famously press-averse Sneddon probably chose to convene a grand jury because it allowed him to avoid the media spotlight. A grand jury also gives him the power to subpoena witnesses who might otherwise be reluctant to take the witness stand, where a preliminary hearing would not. Jackson is charged with seven counts of committing a lewd act on a child under the age of 14 and two counts of plying the boy with alcohol in order to seduce him. He has pleaded innocent and called the charges a "big lie." Though prosecutors tried to keep the grand jury secret, its existence has been so widely reported that the presiding judge of the Santa Barbara County Superior Court on Wednesday issued a "decorum order" apparently aimed at the press. "Dissemination of any information disclosed during grand jury proceedings by witnesses and grand jurors, particularly prior to any indictment, violates the integrity of the grand jury process," Superior Court Judge Clifford Anderson wrote. - REUTERS SOURCE: [url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3556913&thesection=news&thesubsection=world]nzherald.co.nz[/url]

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