E! Scorecard: Jackson’s Ex Scores for the Defense

[i][b]April 27th, 2005[/b][/i] [b][i]Jackson’s Ex-Wife Testifies for the Prosecution but Scores for the Defense[/i][/b] [size=4][b][u]ON THE DOCKET[/u][/b][/size] [b]Day 40:[/b] Testimony from prosecution witnesses [size=4][b][u]TAKING THE STAND[/u][/b][/size] • Hamid Moslehi, Jackson’s ex-personal videographer, shot interview footage of Debbie Rowe and the accuser’s family for The Michael Jackson Interview: The Footage You Were Never Meant to See, the Jackson-approved rebuttal to the infamous Martin Bashir documentary • Debbie Rowe, Jackson’s ex-wife, mother of his two eldest children [size=4][b][u]POINTS FOR THE PROSECUTION[/u][/b][/size] • Um, well…maybe they didn’t get a chance to get to the good parts today. • Oh, hey, here’s one: Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville rejected the defense’s latest request for a mistrial. Jackson’s camp apparently got bent over some testimony offered by Moslehi regarding the shoot for Bashir’s Living with Michael Jackson. [size=4][b][u]POINTS FOR THE DEFENSE[/u][/b][/size] • It all goes back to the accuser’s mother. Last week, the mother said that when she and her children sat down to tape their interview, “the whole thing,” even the outtakes, was scripted. As prosecution witnesses, Rowe and Moslehi ostensibly were called to corroborate that account, seeing as how Rowe made a video of her own for the Jackson camp and Moslehi shot both of them. Problem was, neither Rowe nor Moslehi could back up the mother. Rowe said she insisted her own interview be unrehearsed; Moslehi said he never saw the accuser’s family running lines. • The word “script” is coming back to bite the prosecution big-time. In the Jackson indictment, it charges that the singer’s associates, in one of their “overt acts” of conspiracy, prepared “a script of questions” for the accuser’s family. But while the prosecution is using script, as in “scripted questions,” most everyone else, including the defense, is hearing script, as in dialogue. If the jury believes the prosecution is talking about script, as in dialogue, it may wonder about the location of the “script,” as in bound pages with brads and a cover. (The answer: It’s nowhere. The prosecution never said it had one. But its terminology might have raised expectations.) • In his cross-examination of Moslehi, Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. piled it on the accuser’s mother, running through the woman’s greatest hits (or perceived defense crimes) and asked the videographer if she’d ever told him that she’d taken money from comics and accepted gifts from Jackson and Chris Tucker. Moslehi said the woman had not shared any of those stories with him. • Other things the accuser’s mother never told Moslehi: that she was being held captive by Jackson’s toadies and was starring in the rebuttal video because of threats to her family.