Posted by Major Bombshells, Evasive Answers, & Odd Behavior MJEOL Bullet #200 Accusers mother seemed to have something to hide says certain courtroom observers The hearing held September 17 2004 provided a glimpse into the Michael Jackson case that many have not been privy to. Aside from learning that school officials send out deputies to pick up a large number of fans who skip school to see and support Michael Jackson, we learned a LOT of information during the hearing. Most importantly, for the first time, the public saw the accusers mother unsuccessfully try to talk her way out of very serious situations with far reaching implications. While some anti-Jackson media nuts were making jokes about Jackson, other people were watching the mother intently.
The accusers mother seemed to have terminal cases of selective memory, evasiveness and combativeness. She not only didnt want to answer questions, but took every opportunity to try to distract from the issue. The theme, according to courtroom observers, was I dont know; that is, when she wasnt asking Mesereau to repeat the question for the 6th or 7th time.
Wrapping herself around being chosen by God, she responded to very tough questions by Tom Mesereu, Jacksons defense attorney by telling what some observers call obvious lies.
At issue during the hearing was whether she knew private investigator Brad Miller worked for then-Jackson attorney Mark Geragos. If youll remember, previous reports from some prosecution-apologists claimed she had no idea who worked for whom and simply assumed Miller was part of Jacksons security team. Well, we found out in court last week that this is not true. The defense showed in court that the mother was lying. They read from a court transcript of an audiotape made between the accusers family and Miller. On the tape, Miller introduces himself to her as the PI working for Geragos & Geragos, specifically an attorney named Mark Geragos who works for Michael Jackson. This is where her selective memory kicked it. She can remember to say all the people around Jackson were bad and terrible, and that one of Jacksons people told her Miller worked for a PR firm. But she claims she didnt remember being directly told by Miller that he worked for Geragos. Good thing it was caught on tape. Ok. Maybe, a person could forget once. However, Miller told her at least twiceboth times caught on tape. The Associated Press quotes her as saying, Im not denying it was said. Im saying I dont remember. Yeah right. Then she flew off into an incoherent attempt to explain away getting caught up in a lie. Mesereau of course made it known that the interview, of which he was reading the transcript, was taped. Her response was, The tape says the same thing as the paper (transcript), but by their mouths they said different. What?? That makes no sense. Is she arguing with herself? Has she been caught in a lie and refused to admit it? It was reported earlier that one of the civil attorneys the mother shopped around for was William (Bill) Dickerman. Dickerman testified in court during the grand jury that Miller worked for Geragos. He was confronted with his own testimony in court by defense attorneys. Since he personally has no previous relationship with Miller, he could ONLY have known this information if the mother told him. So she obviously told people who Miller worked for and is lying on the stand. We learned that early letters written by Dickerman to Miller had the carbon copy symbol next to Mark Geragoss name. These letters were turned over to prosecutors. Lets not forget the conference call between defense attorneys and prosecutors where Sneddon at first admitted he knew Miller worked for Jacksons attorney, and further committed to sign an affidavit stating as much. He later claimed he made a mistake. No, Im not kidding. What? Are these Keystone Prosecutors? Some pundits have tried to get out of this by claiming that even if the mother knew this information, she didnt tell the police. So, according to those pundits, we are supposed to be stupid enough to believe that out of all the people investigating Miller, nobody knew who he worked for. This is utterly ridiculous. As reported earlier and by the stepathers own testimony, at one point, the Santa Barbara sheriffs Department had him working as a confidential agent staking out Millers office. The current district attorney Tom Sneddon also staked-out his office before the raid. Certain people have already testified as to what they knew or didnt know about this situation, including Dickerman, Stan Katz, a number of police officers, and the accusers stepfather. All of them claimed that they didnt know Miller worked for Geragos. And all of them may be caught in perjury and/or conspiracy to commit perjury charges before this is issue to put to bed if evidence is presented. Millers office is located in Beverly Hills. The Santa Barbara Sheriffs officers claimed the reason they did not ask the Beverly Hills Police department to assist in the raid was because they didnt trust them. However, the defense brought out in court that there has been nor prior reason for them not to trust the Beverly Hills Police Department. Thus, at the very least, Sneddon should have asked for a special master to be appointed when raiding Millers office. They didnt. Given that this is not even in their regular jurisdiction, Sneddon should have at least asked the Beverly Hills PD to assist and for information about Miller. They didnt. Also reported earlier is the fact that Millers own attorney showed up while the police were busting in the office with sledgehammers and directly told them that Miller is working for Mark Geragos. Instead of stopping the seizure immediately and bring in a special master, they continued as if nothing happened. Bottom line is that certain people or persons are not being truthful about what they knew and when they knew it. Even most independent commentators and observers had serious problems with the mothers dodgy testimony, which only confirmed the defenses argument. According to courtroom observers, she showed up late, she played dumb, and she needed Mesereau to repeat very simple questions five and ten times sometimes. She was perhaps a bit too feisty and too combative with Jacksons attorney on the stand, some observers report. Law professor Laurie Levenson told the Santa Maria Times in an article dated September 18 2004 about her thoughts:
Laurie Levenson, professor at Loyola Law School, said the mothers evasive performance on the stand may prove challenging (if) shes called during a scheduled Jan. 31 trial in the case. Prosecutors will likely still call her, Levenson said. But if they could get away with not calling her, maybe they wouldnt. What jurors want are witnesses who dont play games, and just answer the questions. (see Accuser’s mother a handful on the witness stand (Sept 18 04) -Santa Maria Times)
Levenson certainly was not alone in sharing that opinion. Debra Opri, the Jackson parents lawyer, appeared on Fox News Live with Rita Cosby Sept 19 2004. She was in the courtroom watching the mothers testimony and seeing her credibility being successfully challenged by Jackson attorney Tom Mesereau. She tells Cosby:
First of all, the woman who testified is the mother of the accuser. And Mesereau very pointedly showed her to have a lack of credibility. The woman was confused; disoriented. And she showed herself to be quite a smart-aleck, and it didnt play well. (see FoxNewsLive: Talk about mother’s testimony + Opri Sept 17 2004)
Attorney John Kelly also appeared on the show to talk about what happened in court. He says this was a great opportunity for the defense:
Mesereaus getting a great break here. When youre the defense team and you get to cross-examine a witness at a preliminary hearing or a pre-trial hearing of any sort, and sort of lock them in on their testimony its a real advantage to have probed them once. (see FoxNewsLive: Talk about mother’s testimony + Opri Sept 17 2004)
__Huge Bombshell Information__ The major bombshells dropped by Jacksons defense team puts the mother plotting this plan against Jackson since before she and her son had ever met him. Mesereau wasnt allowed to really go into that very much by the judge for this particular hearing. We learned in court from Jacksons attorneys that the mother hired a lawyer and a private investigator months before she had met Jackson in a plan to seek a financial settlement. We also found out that the accusers mother once accused her ex-husband of molesting and falsely imprisoning the current accuser as well. No, thats not a typo. She has a history of pulling this scam. This begs the questions with who else could she have tried to run this game on, if anyone, and are those people in contact with Jacksons defense team? As reported by the AFP, Jacksons attorney brought out in court that the mother has said her kids can sue Jackson when they turn 18, claimed this whole thing was about money, and hired numerous attorneys:
“She made statements that her children can sue Michael Jackson after they turn 18,” Mesereau declared. “She said she is not after money then she says she is after money. “She has hired numerous lawyers and used resumes for work that show she is sophisticated in investigation and prosecution and can supervise surveillance.” The court was not told what the woman’s job was. But Mesereau said the woman knew how to file lawsuits and had once accused her ex-husband of molesting one of her sons and falsely imprisoning him in Los Angeles. (see Michael Jackson’s lawyers confront his accuser’s mother (Sept 17 04) – AFP )
Her children can sue Jackson when they turn 18? Sounds like a plan shes been working on for a while. But for months weve been told that this isnt about money. Obviously this family has already sought money from at least two different sources before they brought these molestation claims. Maybe we shouldnt rag on a person for overstating their abilities on their resume, but shes claiming knowledge about investigation, prosecution and supervisory surveillance! The defense team is certainly doing their homework. This is a far cry from the poor little family image that they originally pushed on the media when this case first broke. Initially, if youll remember, family friend Jamie Masada claimed that the poor little family was in dire straights before they met Jackson. I guess she couldnt get a job using those sophisticated investigation skills. Or worse: this entire situation is all an act. Opri also said on Fox News Live when asked if the mothers testimony hurt prosecutors:
It will hurt very much in terms of this. If this woman subjected Michael to a shakedown and the defense can show that the credibility is sincerely lacking and that this woman is taking money regularly in lawsuitsaccusing an ex-husband of molesting this same boythis woman knows how to work the system. She knows about Victims Compensation Forms and how to fill them out. She knows what to say to get what she wants. (see FoxNewsLive: Talk about mother’s testimony + Opri Sept 17 2004)
We found out in court during Sneddons testimony at an earlier hearing, he gave the accusers mother Victims Compensation Forms to fill out even before they raided Jacksons home on November 18 2003. Why did he give her these forms even before they raided Jacksons home? Was this incentive for her to stick to the story? Not file a lawsuit, but instead testify for them? Time will tell. That secret and unrecorded meeting with the mother in a parking lot at a federal building is also where he gave her the forms to fill out, where she identified Brad Miller from a photo line-up, and where he took a jacket and DVD from her calling it evidence. Opri says that the accusers mother is no novice to filing lawsuits and getting money from them. This was reported earlier as well. Opri tells Rita Cosby:
One other thing, Rita, that Id like you to emphasize to your audience, the media is properly now turning to this woman. Theyre emphasizing specifically that she is a very litigious woman, she understands the system, and she knows how to manipulate a story on the witness stand. And Mesereau will properly point this out. (see FoxNewsLive: Talk about mother’s testimony + Opri Sept 17 2004)
That litigious history includes documented evidence of her lawsuit against JC Penney. After the family was caught shoplifting from one of the JC Penney stores, the mother sued them, claiming the security guards who stopped them beat them. The mother also tacked on sexual abuse allegations two years after she filed the original lawsuit. She claimed she was sexually fondled for up to seven minutes in broad daylight during the altercation, even though she never reported this to the police at the time. As reported in MJEOL Bullet #99, Even More Damaging Docs of Accusing Familys Past, the lawyer who represented JC Penney talked to NBCs Mike Taibbi about the mothers lawsuit. The attorney, Tom Griffin, released over 100 pages in that case and decried the tactics of the mother, as well as questioned her motives both in their case and in the Jackson case. Griffin was interviewed by Taibbi and called what the mother did to JC Penney a shakedown. What was a small altercation with securityafter the family was caught with stolen merchandiseturned into a $3M lawsuit. That armful of shoplifted clothes was going to cost JC Penney millions of dollars in legal fees; probably more than the $3M for which the family was suing them. Maybe God chose her to file a suit against JC Penney? Good grief. During depositions and investigations, the psychiatrist for JC Penney said that the mother rehearsed her two sonsone is the current accuserto lie and back-up the story she was telling. Sound familiar? The psychiatrist also says that the children were coached in what sounded like scripted copies of testimony (see Is the Michael Jackson Molestation Case a Shakedown) The psychiatrist continued with the assessment of the mothers behavior finding the mother to be schizophrenic and delusional. Even her own psychiatrist found her to be anxious and depressed. As brought out in MJEOL Bullet #99, Russ Halpern, the attorney for the accusers father, said in Nov 2003:
Halpern said the father once showed him a script his wife had allegedly written for their children to use when they were questioned in a civil deposition. She wrote all of their testimony. I actually saw the script, Halpern said. I remember my client showing me, bringing the paperwork to me. (see Accuser’s Mother Said to Praise Jackson (Nov 25 03) – AP)
Because of this history of coaching her children to lie in a previous case(s), it does show a rather obvious pattern. And this is just one previous case that we know about. As mentioned earlier, the mother once accused the father of molesting and falsely imprisoning him too. As much as attorney Craig Mitnik may want to believe the tall tale being told by prosecutors and the woman, even he had to admit that the dodgy, combative behavior of the mother during testimony will cause problems. He tells Foxs Rita Cosby during that Sept 19 2004 show:
She gets in a courtroom in front of Tom Mesereau, it becomes a heated testimony between one another and shes combative. And combative witnesses do not sit well with jurors. So this is gonna be a problem for the prosecution when this thing eventually goes to trial. (see FoxNewsLive: Talk about mother’s testimony + Opri Sept 17 2004)
Why was the mother so dodgy on the stand? Most observers who arent prosecution-mouthpieces (Dimond, Harris, Thomas, etc) say there was certainly something rather odd about her behavior on the stand. Opri sums it up perfectly: She never gave a straight answer to a straight question. And if this becomes a pattern of how she behaves, it will be incredibly detrimental to prosecutors on top of a number of other case-ending bombshells that have already come out about the accusing family. __And the criticism keeps coming __ Continuing to plug-away at the shady behavior of the accusers mother, other sources report similar things to what weve been hearing. They report that she made Mesereau ask her simple questions over and over again; five and ten times sometimes. Appearing on At Large w/ Geraldo on Sept 19 2004, the panelwhich included Joe Tacopinagave their critiques of her testimony. As expected, Art Harris gave a glowing review of the mothers testimony claiming she was strong and not intimidated by Mesereau. I guess we are to believe she wasnt intimidated by Mesereauhigh powered defense attorneybut she was scared to death of Frank Tyson, Michael Jackson, and other people who took her shopping, put her up at hotels, gave her a credit card, etc. Most people who know both Jackson and Tyson say that intimidating is certainly not a word they would ever use to describe either man. The great majority of the people who witnessed her testimony disagreed with Harriss original assessment. Even Stan Goldman, Fox news legal analyst, couldnt agree. He says that either the mother is very crafty or very stupid:
If she testifies for the prosecution, and is all fluent and understands their questions during the trial, its gonna be a tremendous contrast to what we saw when she was answeringor rather, not answering defense questions. Because she was either crafty like a fox, or so stupid she just couldnt understand a question. She forced Mr. Mesereau to ask very simple questions five and tenand Im not exaggeratingtimes. It could work in her favor or it could really play against her with a jury if they just think shes trying to be too clever. (see Rivera: Joe Tacopina + Sept 17 Hearing discussion Sept 19 2004 )
Joe Tacopina, the defense attorney who represents Frank Tyson, offered more specific detail about the mothers testimony. He, probably unlike Art Harris, spoke to independent courtroom observers. Tacopina says her behavior was beyond odd and evasive. He also says she wasnt there to help the defense because the defense already had their irrefutable evidence on tape: an audio conversation between a private investigator Brad Miller and her family where Miller specifically tells themtwicethat he is the PI hired by Michael Jacksons then-attorney Mark Geragos. He cites snippets of the testimony and makes the point:
I spoke to independent people who were in that courtroom. And I have snippets of the testimony. And I gotta tell ya, she said three things in thereand Stans right. This was a narrow hearing regarding whether or not the evidence from Brad Miller gets suppressed or not, that prosecutors improperly seized. Theres a transcript between the investigator and the mother where the investigator introduces himselfthe first thing he says to her is Im Brad Miller. I work for an attorney, Mark Geragos, whos been hired by Michael Jackson. That should be the end of the inquiry. So I dont think she need to help the defense on that. (see Rivera: Joe Tacopina + Sept 17 Hearing discussion Sept 19 2004)
Then Tacopina brings up three suspicious/evasive/odd things that the mother did during her testimony. Her elaborates:
After that, heres what she did; little snippets of what she did on the stand. She is going to, I believe, not last through two hours of a real (cross-examination) at trial. But the defense got a great sneak preview here. The first thing she does is accuse a courtroom spectator of whispering about her in the middle of her testimony. She then says this hearing was just about bringing her more torture. That was in response to nobodys question. And then lastly, when the judge coughed in the middle of her testimony, she stopped about 35 seconds later after the judge coughed, and said Your honor, Im very concerned about your cough. In all seriousness! (see Rivera: Joe Tacopina + Sept 17 Hearing discussion Sept 19 2004)
Weve also heard a number of people who confirm what the defense wanted to show in court; namely that this woman has a previous history of falsely accusing people of molesting and kidnapping her children, among other things. Tacopina also gets into what was said in court:
I think the evidence will showbecause Tom Mesereau tried to get into the whole thing about the JC Penney lawsuit. And she made these false claims against her ex-husband about child molestation and kidnapping. Sorta similar to what we have here. I mean, the wheels are gonna fall off very early, Geraldo, on this woman. Theres so much stuff that will be wheeled out when this trial comes. (see Rivera: Joe Tacopina + Sept 17 Hearing discussion Sept 19 2004)
After getting the assessments from other points of view, Harris at least conceded that the mother did not sound sincere during her testimony on the stand. He also says that unlike the way she was answering questions on that police videotapethat was leaked by someone in either the prosecutors office or the sheriffs departmentshe repeatedly asked Mesereau to repeat simple questions. The general consensus is that she had something to hide with her combative and evasive answers on the stand. If its like pulling teeth to get a simple answer to a simple question, it immediately raises the level of suspicion as to what she has to hide, sources say. We may find out what she has to hide, who her cohorts in this situation were, and what her true motives were for seeking out Jackson. Hey, wheres Jamie Masada? Stay tuned. -MJEOL