1 on by the prosecution to show that terrible acts
2 occurred or something was going wrong, it turns out,
3 just didn’t do that, and couldn’t do that. And when
4 they got up to tell the truth under oath, they told
5 the truth. Many of them had told the prosecution
6 exactly that before they were called. There were
7 several other witnesses, but I don’t want to take
8 the time to go over all of the witnesses. I use
9 those as examples of the kind of failure of proof
10 that has occurred in this case.
11 The second area is that if you look at the
12 entire People’s case to this point, it is inherently
13 improbable and not credible, and -- excuse me.
14 Sorry.
15 When you look at the -- at the law that we
16 cited, the Allen case, citing the California Supreme
17 Court case of People vs. Stanley, credibility is
18 part of the call the Court has to make at this time.
19 It isn’t -- as I said, it’s not a matter of sitting
20 as a juror and usurping their function and saying,
21 “This is the way I would call it.” But it is a
22 matter of determining whether or not a rational
23 trier of fact could believe these stories.
24 In that regard, under the category of
25 inherently improbable and not credible evidence to
26 this point, we’d ask the Court to look at the
27 timeline. The timeline is inherently preposterous.
28 And this goes to the -- to the other counts besides 9021
1 the conspiracy count as well. And in particular it
2 goes to that.
3 Look at the allegations that everybody -- if
4 you listen to Mr. Auchincloss’s summary even trying
5 to introduce exhibits, everybody, in his words, was
6 in a panic. I don’t think it shows a panic. It
7 shows people were excited about getting some kind of
8 video out because they thought it would help Mr.
9 Jackson, they thought it would help their own
10 business interests. Sure, that’s not contested in
11 this case.
12 And what’s not contested is that at that
13 time, at least during the course of February, it
14 became obvious that Janet Arvizo was not a very
15 stable person. No matter how you look at this
16 evidence, it became obvious that she was showing
17 signs of being somewhat unstable in one way or
18 another. And we can talk about that in more detail,
19 but let’s just take the big picture.
20 It was not clear what her agenda was. And
21 it was known that her boyfriend, Major Jackson, was
22 calling and asking for money, more money than a
23 college education and a house. It was clear that
24 other things were going on.
25 It is just inherently improbable that
26 anybody - anybody - and I’m not suggesting for one
27 second that Mr. Jackson would do such a thing, but
28 it’s inherently improbable that anybody would choose 9022
1 the moment somewhere late in that scenario in March
2 to say, “Well, why don’t I molest this child.” I
3 mean, it just makes no sense. It makes no sense.
4 It’s inherently improbable.
5 Secondly, what’s inherently improbable about
6 the timeline is that Janet Arvizo and Major Jackson,
7 on at least one occasion, went to visit Attorney
8 Dickerman, maybe two occasions. Janet Arvizo
9 visited him several times. She visited with Jamie
10 Masada. The children visited with Attorney
11 Dickerman. This occurred in April, I think, for
12 Dickerman. April, May, on into June. They
13 eventually go to Attorney Feldman sometime in April
14 and into May. On all of these meetings with all of
15 these people, there’s never an allegation of molest.
16 The molest allegations come up only after
17 they’re sent to Dr. Katz and only after they see
18 Dr. Katz, after Janet Arvizo talks to him a couple
19 times, and then he sees the children late May and
20 early June, and then the lawyers, Dickerman,
21 Feldman, and Katz meet and then they decide to go to
22 Child Services at that time.
23 Thank you.
24 So the -- it’s inherently improbable that
25 this -- that this supports a molest charge or a
26 conspiracy charge.
27 But the Court also has to look at this in
28 the context of what’s already come in about Janet 9023
1 Arvizo’s modus operandi and the modus operandi of
2 this family. On at least two other occasions she
3 followed the exactly the same scenario, and that
4 evidence has already come in. It hasn’t come in in
5 full force yet, but it’s come in sufficiently in the
6 conclusion of the People’s case that the Court can
7 consider it.
8 The J.C. Penney’s case. It came in through
9 her testimony that she first made claims, not right
10 away, but months later, that she was assaulted and
11 falsely imprisoned, and then was -- from the
12 testimony we had, toward the end of the statute of
13 limitations, she comes in and makes allegations of
14 sexual assault, which ultimately there was some
15 testimony about that in the deposition.
16 She eventually settles that case.
17 The same progression occurs over time with
18 her ex-husband. Right -- the evidence is there.
19 And from the evidence you have, you can put two and
20 two together from the dates that were there. Right
21 after she settles the case at a mediation with J.C.
22 Penney’s, but before she and her husband have
23 decided who’s going to get the money, she accuses
24 him of assault and imprisoning her and her family.
25 Later, and the evidence is there, just before the
26 money is finally going to be divided, while they’re
27 still fighting about it, she accuses him of sexual
28 molest. 9024
1 The same pattern that occurred here. As
2 things progressed, you go from assault, to
3 imprisonment, to sexual molest.
4 This -- that evidence makes it highly
5 improbable in and of itself that just somehow, out
6 of all of the people of the world, these people are
7 going to be victims of Michael Jackson.
8 The next point in this category of the
9 highly improbable case is that obviously, as the
10 Court’s heard, this is a family who is taking
11 advantage of a lot of benefits of being associated
12 with Mr. Jackson from February through March of
13 2003, and those benefits include the shopping
14 sprees, the body waxes, the nails, all the other
15 things particularly that Miss Arvizo had admitted
16 to. And they’re staying in hotels, they’re doing
17 all sorts of things that are just inconsistent with
18 being imprisoned.
19 It’s highly improbable because they claim
20 they escaped three or more times, depending on how
21 you count it, from Neverland, whereas they came back
22 each time. They were sent in a Rolls Royce the
23 first time that was checked out, and everybody
24 checked out at the gate. There was nothing secret
25 about it.
26 Sure, that may have made people nervous that
27 were trying to put together a rebuttal video because
28 they’re hoping that this family is going to 9025
1 cooperate and they’re hoping they don’t go to the
2 tabloids and sell a salacious story. They’re hoping
3 they don’t turn on them one way or another. And it
4 turns out their hopes and their fears in that regard
5 were well-founded, because that is ultimately what
6 happened.
7 But the escapes and the return and the
8 escapes and the return are just improbable, highly
9 improbable, and not credible.
10 All of the Arvizo family members, although
11 it seems it was a long time ago now, but when they
12 were on the stand, I think the Court recalls that
13 they had incredibly selective memories. They were
14 very able to recite some rote facts that were the
15 core of their claims against Mr. Jackson, but they
16 couldn’t remember much of anything else, including
17 who they met with recently and so on.
18 So, on the sexual offense charges, it’s
19 inherently improbable and there is not credible
20 evidence of those charges.
21 When I get to “witness willfully false”
22 testimony at the end, I’m going to cover some more
23 points on that, but for now, I think it’s safe to
24 say the Court heard all that evidence, it’s not
25 credible, it’s inherently improbable.
26 On the conspiracy charges, there’s just a
27 total failure of proof, so I’d say it’s more than
28 inherently improbable and not credible. There’s 9026
1 just a failure of proof in tying Mr. Jackson into
2 any kind of a conspiracy. There is nothing to show
3 his specific intent to agree to -- there’s no
4 agreement and no specific intent to agree to commit
5 a crime, and there’s no specific intent that that
6 crime actually occurred. You just don’t have him in
7 this.
8 You’ve got witnesses called by the
9 prosecution who basically -- even Rudy Provencio,
10 who was their blockbuster witness, who basically
11 says Mr. Jackson was not involved in things. You
12 had Debbie Rowe, who said people would take
13 advantage of him. You’ve got witness after witness
14 who’s testified that Mr. Jackson is a creative
15 genius. He is -- he does a lot of things very well.
16 You have from time to time people say he’s a very
17 good businessman, but -- and I don’t mean to say
18 that he’s not, but that doesn’t mean that he has
19 hands-on control of what people are doing. And in
20 particular in this case, there’s no evidence that he
21 had hands-on control of anything with regard to this
22 alleged conspiracy.
23 I don’t think a conspiracy has been shown
24 even among the other people, but this is a case
25 against Mr. Jackson. And there’s been nothing shown
26 that’s credible to establish that he is a member of
27 a conspiracy. He was a person who had all sorts of
28 other things going on in his life. Certainly he 9027
1 would have been aware of this Bashir tape. He would
2 have been aware of some things, but -- in general
3 one might assume that, but beyond that assumption,
4 there’s no indication that he was running anything,
5 directing anything, or doing anything.
6 Now, the third area of evidence I’m going to
7 talk about is the 1108 evidence. And I want to talk
8 about that in two different regards.
9 First of all, the 1108 evidence was highly
10 improbable. But secondly, it has the danger -- even
11 if it was credible evidence, it would have the great
12 danger of causing a rational trier of fact to not
13 hold the prosecution to the standard of proof
14 required in this case, proof beyond a reasonable
15 doubt of the current offense. And that is the
16 danger of 1108 and that’s -- that’s something that
17 needs to be addressed.
18 In that regard, every witness that was
19 called with regard to the 1108 evidence either sued
20 Mr. Jackson for money, sometimes -- never
21 successfully, but sometimes settling, other times
22 being blown out of the water rather dramatically, or
23 they sold their stories to the tabloids or the
24 tabloid television shows, or they had a book deal,
25 or in some cases like Adrian McManus, Chacon and
26 Abdool, they had all three. They did a book deal
27 with Mr. Gutierrez. They did tabloid -- selling of
28 their stories through Splash, to Star Magazine, and 9028
1 elsewhere. And they had one of their members appear
2 on Inside Edition, all for money.
3 The other ones, as the Court has heard -- I
4 won’t go through every witness, but as the Court has
5 heard, everybody has been involved in that. Out of
6 the literally thousands of people whose lives
7 intersect Mr. Jackson’s during that period of
8 time -- and we’ve heard about that. He has -- you
9 know, he had 100 employees or more, maybe not all at
10 one time at the ranch, but over that period of time
11 certainly he had at least that many. He’s had
12 countless friends and relatives and other people who
13 have visited the ranch, guests of all sorts.
14 Obviously he’s had all sorts of connections with
15 people in the music industry, and so on. And
16 there’s been some testimony about other celebrities
17 with whom he’s friends. And yet who comes forward
18 in this case under 1108 but the Abdools, McManuses
19 and Chacons, who sell their story and the other
20 witnesses who sell their stories.
21 Phillip LeMarque, who was out there bidding
22 and admitted that he was told, “Well, if you can do
23 better about the story it would be worth more,” his
24 answer is, “Well, I was just playing along,” when he
25 was asking for $500,000.
26 So you look at that evidence and it’s very,
27 very weak and very suspect evidence. I realize that
28 it met the burden, that the Court determined it met 9029
1 the burden. I can’t concede anything, as you know,
2 Your Honor. But the Court concluded it met the
3 burden for 1108 and made some cuts and calls as to
4 what could come in. But that doesn’t mean that it
5 makes the cut when it comes to being determinative
6 so a rational trier of fact can find a defendant
7 guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
8 More importantly, as I indicated at the
9 beginning of this segment of my argument, this
10 creates a high risk that a false conviction could
11 occur. Because the 1108 evidence isn’t really
12 probative on anything except propensity, and that’s
13 what it’s brought in for. There’s minimal 1101
14 evidence. But it’s really 1108 evidence. It’s only
15 on propensity. And that means that the jury then is
16 told, “You can conclude that this defendant has a
17 propensity to do these sorts of things.”
18 If there’s a total failure of proof, and
19 there’s a lack of credible, reliable evidence that
20 could persuade a rational trier of fact beyond a
21 reasonable doubt on the charges that he’s sitting
22 here facing, there’s a lack of that kind of
23 evidence, there is a high risk that that kind of
24 1108 evidence can cause an emotional reaction rather
25 than a rational reaction. So you risk that the jury
26 could -- an emotional jury could find the defendant
27 guilty as opposed to a rational jury or a rational
28 trier of fact. 9030
1 And I don’t mean to insult the jurors, but
2 that’s precisely why the Court is asked to entertain
3 an 1118.1 motion. It’s because the Court can sit
4 here more dispassionately and look at the evidence
5 and make the kinds of distinctions that we talk
6 about when we talk about the law in this area.
7 Whereas the jury, as much as they’re going
8 to be instructed and as much argument as there’s
9 going to be, this is their one case and they’re
10 going to sit here and it’s going to be very
11 difficult for them to make that cut. So it’s all
12 the more important in a case where 1108 evidence has
13 come in to -- for the Court to make a careful
14 determination on 1118.1 as to whether or not this
15 case should make the cut and go to the jury.
16 And I realize -- and I’ve got to
17 parenthetically insert this somewhere, so I’ll do it
18 here. There’s no question this is a hard call. And
19 the Court has made hard calls throughout this whole
20 case, and it’s a hard call.
21 But I think we have to look at it and -- as
22 I’m sure the Court is doing, and I don’t mean to be,
23 you know, insulting in any way to bring it up, but
24 we all have to remind ourselves, it doesn’t matter
25 if this is the Michael Jackson case or any other
26 case, any other person sitting in that chair,
27 whether there are cameras out there or there are not
28 cameras out there, whether there’s a lot of press 9031
1 going on about this or not. The fact of the matter
2 is, as a friend of mine used to say, it’s balls and
3 strikes, and the Court, of course, has to call it.
4 And when you look at this, one has to
5 wonder -- after looking at those first three
6 categories of the case that I just talked about, one
7 has to wonder would this case have ever gone
8 anywhere like this were it not for the fact that
9 Michael Jackson was the defendant.
10 How many -- and I don’t want to refer to
11 other cases, but I think it’s reasonable to raise
12 the question as to how many cases, murder cases,
13 death penalty cases, do you have nine fingerprint
14 technicians and experts working on fingerprints?
15 How many cases do you spend the kind of resources
16 and the time, and bring people in, try to find
17 anybody who will come in and say anything to try to
18 put together a prejudicial case, if not an actual
19 legal case of the elements against a defendant?
20 So having said that, Mr. Jackson, as I said
21 before, is not only -- you know, he’s entitled to no
22 more, but no less respect than anybody else in this
23 regard. And the Court also has to look at it and
24 say, “Well, wait a second. All of these resources
25 have been spent and where are we?” We’re nowhere in
26 this case.
27 Now, the last category that I want to talk
28 about I think makes the Court’s decision a little 9032
1 easier. And I hesitate to use that word, because I
2 suspect there’s nothing easy about the Court’s
3 determination. But if there is -- if there’s any
4 way to make it less hard, I think this does, because
5 as we have briefed and as I have alluded to at the
6 beginning, if a witness is willfully false, the
7 Court can disregard or the trier of fact can
8 disregard the entire testimony unless the overall
9 evidence persuades the Court of the truth of their
10 testimony.
11 And we have witnesses who have committed
12 perjury on the stand, who were put up on that stand,
13 and who got up there and lied. And I’m not just
14 arguing this. I’m going to point out, through a few
15 witnesses, where I believe the evidence conclusively
16 shows that there are lies. And that anybody who
17 looked at this case from any aspect, whether it be
18 the jury box or the bench or the counsel table,
19 would have to say these people have been willfully
20 false. And if the key witnesses have been willfully
21 false, and the other witnesses that were put on have
22 pretty much self-destructed to a large extent, what
23 is this case all about?
24 I think the Court has to look at it and say
25 there is not credible evidence at the end of the day
26 supporting the prosecution’s theory of this case,
27 and therefore an 1118.1 motion should be granted as
28 to everything. 9033
1 Let me refer to some of the “witness
2 willfully false” statements. And I chose statements
3 that I think will be noncontroversial. I say that,
4 and we’ll find out if there’s a controversy, but I
5 tried to pick some of the statements that are just
6 so clearly false that there really isn’t an argument
7 about it, or there shouldn’t be an argument about
8 it.
9 Let’s take Gavin Arvizo to start with.
10 One of the statements that was so clearly
11 false, not a close call at all, is he got on this
12 stand in this court and alleged that Michael Jackson
13 told him that he had to masturbate because if boys
14 don’t masturbate, they get to a certain level and
15 they may rape women.
16 Now, we know that’s false, because I believe
17 it was Sergeant Robel -- and I was going to go
18 check, but I believe it was Sergeant Robel who was
19 on the stand, and I asked him, “Did you ever hear
20 that statement before in this case?” And he said,
21 “No.” And then I asked him if he had interviewed
22 Gavin Arvizo previously, and he said, “Yes.” And
23 who did he attribute that statement to? And it was
24 his grandmother. And I believe we brought out that
25 it was -- that’s what he also said at the grand
26 jury.
27 Now, this isn’t something that innocent
28 misrecollection may cause a witness to just, you 9034
1 know, make a little mistake on the stand. This is
2 something that somebody says when they are lying.
3 And that’s why we have the “witness willfully false”
4 instruction and that’s why, when you look at these
5 willfully false statements, at the end of the day,
6 the only rational thing that anybody can conclude is
7 the People have failed to prove their case beyond a
8 reasonable doubt.
9 Look at the changed dates of the alleged
10 incidents. Gavin Arvizo at first said it was from
11 February 7th on. And what happened was, as the case
12 progressed, rather than memories fading, memories
13 got much more specific in all of these prosecution
14 witnesses, these key prosecution witnesses. And
15 they got more specific in a way that helped the
16 prosecution get over hurdles.
17 What happened, as we know, is that nobody
18 had the Bashir tape. Nobody had the Brad Miller
19 tape-recording. And the Arvizos free-wheeled and
20 said, “Hey, this is the way everything was,” and
21 made their statement.
22 As this came out, all of a sudden the
23 prosecution did what they should have done, and I
24 agree they should have done: They took the tape and
25 they showed it to these people, and said, “What do
26 you have to say about that?” Okay.
27 Well, for one thing, what they did is, they
28 decided to move the dates. So they moved the dates 9035
1 to the point where it happened at the end of the
2 stay. And now, from the evidence that the Court has
3 before it, and including travel records and logs
4 that were just admitted by the prosecution, it’s
5 clear that Mr. Jackson was there only a very brief
6 period of time during those days in March when the
7 Arvizo family was there. But they moved the dates.
8 It’s willfully false.
9 As I alluded to the change in testimony with
10 regard to the tapes, remember that, until the
11 prosecution had these tapes, they had no idea that
12 these people had gotten up there and said, you know,
13 “Michael Jackson is a wonderful guy,” and
14 “Everything was fine and nothing happened,” and
15 “We’re happy,” and, you know, “We wish him the best
16 and we love him and he’s like a daddy,” and
17 everything else.
18 They show them the tapes and what happened?
19 This came out in cross-examination. Each one of
20 those Arvizo children said that what they said on
21 the tape was false and they said Dieter made them
22 say it. And Janet embellished on that, which I’ll
23 get to in a moment, but they said Dieter made them
24 say it. Gavin himself said, two places, 99.9
25 percent of that tape was false and Dieter made him
26 say it.
27 That’s a witness willfully false. It’s a
28 witness willfully false. And we know that, why? 9036
1 Not only because it’s all inherently improbable when
2 you watch the tape and they’re goofing off and
3 they’re laughing and they’re saying whatever they’re
4 saying, but we uncovered the cards that were sent by
5 the Arvizos.
6 And I’m sorry, I don’t have the exhibit
7 number right here, but Your Honor remembers the
8 cards that were sent.
9 Why were the cards sent? They were sent in
10 2001 because Gavin had recovered, and Michael
11 Jackson was no longer at that point inviting them to
12 the ranch. Mr. Jackson had other things to do, I’m
13 sure. But he wasn’t inviting him to the ranch.
14 They claim they had his phone number or a phone
15 number. They had to call Evvy Tavasci, which
16 everybody else has to call, as we found out, who
17 everybody has to call. They didn’t like that. They
18 didn’t have communications, so they started sending
19 these over-the-top cards. And these over-the-top
20 cards had exactly the same language that they used
21 in that video that they -- that Gavin has now
22 claimed is 99 percent false because Dieter told him
23 to say it.
24 So it’s a witness willfully false. And I’m
25 sorry, I mean, we can feel sorry for this young man
26 because apparently he had these serious health
27 problems, and everybody’s glad to see when a child
28 recovers and so on. But the problem is he’s making 9037
1 serious felony accusations against my client and
2 he’s lying. And he’s lying. That’s all there is to
3 it.
4 We know that the cards, by the way, were
5 sent for what? They were sent for gain. They
6 wanted to get back into Michael’s world. That’s
7 when they weren’t able to do it. We know that cards
8 were sent to Louise Palanker that were just the same
9 kind of cards, that called her “Mommy,” “Wheezy,”
10 and made the same kind of things. What happened?
11 Those were sent after she said, “You can’t have any
12 more money.” It’s the same pattern.
13 So they got on this tape and they said
14 over-the-top things, not because Dieter told them to
15 say them or anybody else. It’s because that’s what
16 they do when they want to get into somebody’s world
17 and they want to gain something from them, whether
18 it’s money or just being a part of the celebrity or
19 whatever.
20 But what we do know from that is that when
21 he got up there, he made that statement, that it was
22 99 percent false, on the stand. He said, “Well, I
23 didn’t really mean that.” “Well, maybe I meant it.”
24 That’s willfully false. It’s willfully false.
25 Dieter didn’t tell him to do that. We know that.
26 We can’t look the other way and say it’s close
27 enough for government work. These things are too
28 big. 9038
1 Gavin lied about what happened on the plane.
2 We had Cindy Bell, who came to testify. She was a
3 People’s witness. She was clear. She was on her
4 feet the whole time. It was a small plane. She
5 said it would be like the front part of the jury box
6 to where she was there. She walked back and forth.
7 She could see everybody. She was constantly worried
8 about their well-being. She stayed on her feet the
9 entire trip. Nobody ever said she sat down. The
10 mother was there, Dr. Farshshian was there. We had
11 the testimony that the security guard was there.
12 Other people are there.
13 It’s inherently improbable, but Cindy Bell
14 makes it very clear that the testimony in particular
15 was false. Gavin wasn’t drinking alcohol. Gavin
16 was obnoxious when he got on the plane to start
17 with, and remained obnoxious throughout the flight.
18 He threw food at the sleeping doctor, which was kind
19 of a humorous picture, but it shows that the
20 testimony of these people in this case, Gavin in
21 particular, is willfully false. Can’t get around
22 it.
23 So on Gavin, if the statement attributed to
24 Michael Jackson to try to convict him of a felony
25 that he had routinely said in the past was what his
26 grandmother told him, just taking that one statement
27 alone, I don’t see how any rational trier of fact
28 could say, “Well, let’s regard the rest of his 9039
1 testimony as truthful.”
2 Going on to Star, claiming there was wine in
3 the Coke can because he saw red around the rim. The
4 only problem was these kids had some core facts they
5 got right or they got consistent with each other,
6 but they didn’t have some of the other facts. All
7 the other testimony was that Michael Jackson had
8 white wine in his Coke can.
9 Star Arvizo denied that he ever pulled a
10 knife on Kiki Fournier. Your Honor heard Kiki
11 Fournier. She was called by the prosecution. She
12 said the kid pulled a knife on her. I mean, it’s --
13 that’s not something that is just you don’t
14 remember.
15 And then he lied about what happened on the
16 plane as well. He lied about where he was sitting
17 and he lied about all sorts of things. But
18 certainly the Cindy Bell testimony makes it clear
19 that he was lying.
20 So we have witness willfully false, Gavin
21 and Star.
22 Davellin had some other issues.
23 And again, I want to emphasize, there are
24 lots of things that I disagree with in the
25 testimony, I think maybe the way the testimony
26 indicates that these people are lying in other
27 regards and it just didn’t happen. I mean, don’t
28 get me wrong, but I’m just picking out these 9040
1 specific willfully false episodes.
2 Look at Davellin. She lied. She said she
3 stayed in the guest cottage with her mother, and her
4 mother didn’t want to leave, so they cowered there
5 and they stayed there. I forgot her exact words.
6 But she was imprisoned with her mother there in the
7 guest cottage, in the Unit 4.
8 And what happened? It turns out they
9 brought the police officer on, sworn police officer,
10 Officer Barron, who moonlighted there. He said not
11 only did the gate logs reflect that she was out at
12 the theater staying with Marie Nicole, but I asked
13 him, “Do you remember that?” He says, “Oh, yeah, I
14 remember she was out there. She was hanging out
15 with Marie Nicole. She was out there at the
16 theater. That’s where she stayed.” That’s not
17 cowering in her room with her mother. That is
18 witness willfully false.
19 They are trying to convict Michael Jackson
20 and they have the assistance of the prosecution
21 doing things like bringing in this 1108 to try to
22 make their otherwise absolutely fantastic stories
23 seem more saleable to a jury.
24 Davellin also said -- and this is a witness
25 willfully false. That’s why I pick it out. She
26 also said her brother was a sweet, nice boy who
27 never had problems until after they left the ranch
28 at the end, in March of 2003. 9041
1 There was clear evidence from people called
2 by the prosecution, from a teacher and an
3 administrator, who went through the records and
4 summarized everything else that was in his record,
5 that he was completely out of control. He was
6 profane. He was obnoxious. He would disrupt class.
7 He was actually kicked out of class repeatedly prior
8 to 2003.
9 So this idea that she was going to get up
10 and sell the product here to this jury that her
11 brother was a sweet, nice boy and Michael Jackson
12 caused all this, and therefore he should be
13 convicted of child molest, is a witness willfully
14 false on a material issue. Forgetting, again, about
15 all the other details of her testimony that don’t
16 match with reality or other evidence in their
17 arguments, that’s just clearly refuted.
18 Then we go to Janet Arvizo. And we can
19 spend forever on Janet Arvizo, but I won’t. I’ll
20 just hit some of the highlights of things that are
21 clearly a witness willfully false.
22 I mean, anybody who saw her affect in the
23 courtroom would have to conclude by virtue of her
24 affect alone and the glib way that she tried to
25 testify and the way she tried to add things whenever
26 it suited her purpose, and so on, was the testimony
27 of somebody who wasn’t telling the truth. But look
28 at some of the particulars. 9042
1 She claimed the entire Bashir tape was
2 scripted. Every single word. She said she made
3 three mistakes. She said something about God -- I
4 forgot what the three were. But there were three
5 little mistakes. Otherwise, it was absolutely
6 scripted.
7 We got to get real. I don’t care whose case
8 this is. That witness was bizarre. And she says it
9 was scripted. She said the outtakes were scripted.
10 The hand-holding, the laughing, the gang signs,
11 everything was scripted, she claimed, when it’s
12 clear -- I mean, you’d have to be an idiot to
13 believe that. Excuse me for putting it that way.
14 But I mean, it’s clear when you look at the tape the
15 first time -- as Your Honor mentioned, we saw the
16 tape many times. When you look at the tape the
17 first time, one of the things that strikes you right
18 off the bat is she doesn’t know the camera’s on and
19 she’s laughing and fooling around and giving
20 suggestions how to make this look better and telling
21 the camera people what to do. And she’s claiming
22 now on the stand that that was scripted, she was
23 told she had to say all those words and she
24 memorized it.
25 Now, the memorization part of it. I’m just
26 taking the real big whoppers that you can really pin
27 down so we don’t have to talk about everything else.
28 The memorization part of it is so clearly false. 9043
1 She said the Brad Miller interview was all from the
2 heart and what she said to Brad Miller was all true.
3 The Brad Miller interview included a lot of
4 the exact same kind of language and it was -- they
5 weren’t the exact same words. Some of the same
6 words were used, but it’s the same phraseology, it’s
7 the same thoughts, it’s the same this and that, that
8 she had in the -- conveyed in the rebuttal film with
9 Mr. Moslehi.
10 The Brad Miller interview was on February
11 the 16th. The rebuttal video was February the 19th
12 at night, going into the morning of the 20th.
13 Probably the camera started rolling right around
14 midnight or so, okay?
15 She said, when she was asked, how could you
16 have memorized however many hours that was of
17 conversation, including outtakes and giggling, and
18 doing that -- I mean, that takes a lot of rehearsal.
19 How did you do that? She said she met with Dieter
20 ten times a day, who coached her and had the script,
21 and she memorized every word, except for the three
22 words that she got wrong.
23 Okay? Inherently improbable to start with.
24 But it’s also just absolutely bizarre. I’m sorry to
25 laugh, but it’s just so bizarre, because from the
26 16th to the 19th, she’s staying at Jay Jackson’s
27 house. She didn’t see Dieter between the 16th and
28 the 19th. The only time that she would have seen 9044
1 Dieter was from February 6th, when she said she
2 briefly talked to him in Miami, and then from
3 February 8th, after everybody returned on the 7th
4 from Miami to the ranch, the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th,
5 when she went out and got her body wax and then had
6 Jesus Salas drive her home in the middle of the
7 night in the Rolls Royce.
8 So is she claiming that we should believe or
9 any rational trier of fact should believe that she
10 was coached ten times a day on the 8th, 9th and 10th
11 and 11th, took her out for a body wax, and then
12 forgot it all. When she talked to Brad Miller, it
13 was from the heart, and then came back on the 19th?
14 Or are we to believe that this happened between the
15 16th and the 19th when she -- when this was scripted
16 and she was given every word? It’s just
17 preposterous.
18 So she’s a witness willfully false, clearly,
19 on these issues, and I don’t mean to, by taking
20 those examples, to ask the Court not to think about
21 the big picture. This is one of the most clearly
22 deceptive witnesses that has ever appeared in any
23 court.
24 Look at the testimony about the -- what she
25 called the leg wax. We’ll give her the benefit of
26 the doubt for the purpose of the end of the People’s
27 case here. She gets a leg wax on 2-11. She knows
28 that’s coming up. And a number of the prosecution 9045
1 witnesses did this. They knew something was coming
2 up, and so they tried to head it off at the pass.
3 And she knew this was coming up and she raised her
4 hand, as I recall. I was sitting there, and I
5 thought, “What’s happening?”
6 But she raises her hand and said something.
7 “Oh, I paid for this. I paid for this.” And she
8 wasn’t asked. She just was volunteering this. And
9 how did she say she paid for it? She said the
10 plastic bag that was tied onto her luggage handle
11 had gotten lost on the Xtra Jet flight, and
12 therefore somebody owed her money for her shoes that
13 were in there. And so she considered that Michael
14 Jackson paying for her leg wax was, in fact, her
15 paying for the leg wax because she lost her plastic
16 bag.
17 Besides that just being improbable, the way
18 she did it, it was clearly lying. Clearly lying.
19 It had no relation to reality, no relation to the
20 other evidence in the case. No relation to her own
21 internal testimony. It was just an effort to lie to
22 try to persuade this jury that Mr. Jackson should be
23 convicted.
24 She admitted that she lied under oath in the
25 J.C. Penney case. She lied about had what happened
26 on the plane. It’s clear from Cindy Bell’s
27 testimony and everybody else’s testimony, it just
28 doesn’t match up. 9046
1 As we were precluded from going into -- and
2 I understand the Court can’t consider it. I suppose
3 the Court can’t consider it. I won’t concede that,
4 but for the sake of this argument I will concede it,
5 without conceding the case, whether the trier of
6 fact can consider her taking the Fifth adversely to
7 her, even the Court doesn’t do that, and we didn’t
8 get into -- directly into the welfare fraud
9 allegations through her testimony. Her husband, Jay
10 Jackson, took the stand and, said, “Yeah, I had” --
11 “I had base pay.” And we all know, base pay is just
12 the start for the military. After you get all the
13 allowances, housing allowance and all that, his pay
14 is 5,000 a month. He’s depositing her welfare
15 checks into his account. He said that. Clearly
16 this is a person who’s not telling the truth.
17 Now, as I say, the rest of her story is
18 inherently preposterous. But one of the things
19 that’s not just preposterous but it’s obviously a
20 witness willfully false that recurs throughout her
21 testimony, and so I select it just to use as a
22 further example, is that she claimed that she was
23 imprisoned and couldn’t call 9-1-1. And yet, once
24 all the telephone records come in, and they’re in,
25 for instance, from the Calabasas Inn, she said -- in
26 her direct, I believe, she admitted she called her
27 mother. She called Jay Jackson routinely from
28 Calabasas. She called Aja Pryor from other 9047
1 locations, including the ranch. She called Jay
2 Jackson. She called other people. She talked to
3 Aja Pryor numerous times. She was able to meet with
4 her lawyer, Mr. Dickerman. Was able to meet with
5 Jamie Masada. She was able to go to all sorts of
6 restaurants, do all sorts of other things, go in and
7 get documents from the federal building where there
8 are all sorts of federal officers. She had her
9 lawyer send her her divorce papers. I believe she
10 indicated that’s where she got them from, so she
11 could get her passports. She met with her lawyer in
12 court.
13 She had every opportunity to talk with
14 somebody or to make that 9-1-1 call. Louise
15 Palanker said that she called and said something to
16 the effect that -- Miss Palanker said she called and
17 said, “Well, can I come over?” And Miss Palanker
18 didn’t want her to come over for -- using some good
19 judgment. And at that point she says, “Well, maybe
20 I could meet you tomorrow at the mall.” And any
21 rational person will say, “Well, wait a second.
22 Meet at the mall; what’s the story.”
23 And Miss Palanker said -- I asked her, “What
24 do you mean?”
25 “She said, ‘Well, they let me go shopping.’”
26 I mean, that’s not a person who’s falsely
27 imprisoned. That’s a lie. These are just plain
28 lies. 9048
1 Now, the Court can speculate as to why she
2 was lying. I mean, there is certainly some
3 cross-examination about the fact that she didn’t
4 want to be separated from Michael Jackson. And
5 there’s a lot of other things going on in her life
6 that you could put together to see how inherently
7 improbable her testimony is; for instance, why she
8 would have this wax, and then Jay Jackson calls, and
9 then she calls him back, and then all of a sudden
10 she decides after that, when he wasn’t able to get
11 ahold of her while she’s having her body wax and
12 whatever else she’s doing there, that she tells him,
13 “No, everything’s okay,” and she’s got to leave
14 right away. That’s not escaping from the ranch.
15 That’s escaping to go back to Jay Jackson and patch
16 things up before they fall apart.
17 We could talk about the different theories.
18 But forgetting about the theories for the moment,
19 you got a witness willfully false. She couldn’t
20 call 9-1-1? She could make outgoing calls from the
21 ranch to Jay Jackson. She could make outgoing calls
22 from the ranch to other people. She can call Aja
23 Pryor. She made all these -- completed all these
24 calls and talked for -- if you look at the records
25 of the Calabasas Inn, she talked for, you know, 30
26 minutes, 45 minutes. I mean, she’s yakking on the
27 phone. Her testimony is, “Well, I was leaving
28 little hints.” That is just absolutely a witness 9049
1 willfully false.
2 And then that leaves us with the
3 prosecution’s last blockbuster witness, who they, I
4 think, represented but clearly intended that he’d
5 tie things up for the People and somehow make their
6 case after everything has fallen apart. And what
7 happened but his testimony fell apart. And that was
8 Rudy Provencio.
9 He got up, his affect was very strange for a
10 witness in a serious case who really had something
11 to say, and then we find out why. It turns out that
12 when he was first interviewed at length on January
13 31st, he had never said anything about killers. He
14 never said anything about escape. He said Debbie
15 Rowe was sincere. He never said anything about
16 questions being -- I’m sorry, answers being
17 scripted. He only said there were questions.
18 That’s what he told the police officers.
19 Then he decided to go to work for the police
20 and start tape-recording stuff. None of which came
21 into evidence, because it wasn’t significant. It
22 didn’t come into evidence or it would have been
23 here, I’m sure. He tape-recorded stuff during 2004
24 trying to get people to say things. And he was
25 trying to be helpful to the prosecution, all right?
26 What does he do? He comes in with these
27 notes that he claims he found two weeks ago. And
28 what does he do? He even comes with the receipt 9050
1 from the -- from the storage place to show that he
2 went there to clean out his storage two weeks ago.
3 He’s a witness willfully false. He was lying
4 through his teeth.
5 And we know that. We not only know that he
6 was lying and perjuring himself on the stand, as
7 were these other witnesses -- and I don’t say that
8 lightly and I don’t say it rhetorically. I’m saying
9 it specifically, clinically, for a reason. That’s
10 what happened. We know he manufactured evidence.
11 And how do we know that? We know that from the
12 evidence in this case. It is just absolutely clear.
13 And the reason we know that is he claimed
14 that he wrote these notes contemporaneously. And
15 the new notes that he just turned over that he never
16 told anybody about, he never told the police about
17 escape, killers, or anything else until two weeks
18 ago, when at the same time he’s finding these --
19 miraculously finding these notes that he
20 manufactured in violation of Penal Code Section 134,
21 a felony. He should be prosecuted.
22 He said these notes were written on February
23 1, 2003. When he was confronted with the absolute
24 impossibility that those notes couldn’t have been
25 written at that time, then he said, “Well, look down
26 here. Paragraph two is a different handwriting, so
27 I must have done it on a different date, even though
28 February 2 comes after February 1.” And, “Look, I 9051
1 had February 17 earlier, so, see? It could all be a
2 big mistake.”
3 Okay? But what he said, and he stuck by it
4 through the very end through Mr. Mesereau’s
5 questioning, was the part about “The mom is flipping
6 out” was definitely part of his notes. That was
7 right under the January -- I mean, the February 1,
8 2003, notation. And he said and he claimed and
9 swore under oath that that was February 1.
10 And he offered the explanation on January
11 24th, we’ve got a transcript from Kathryn Milofsky,
12 a CBS correspondent who was at one time in England
13 and apparently is here now, whose name pops up every
14 once in a while on various things. She seems to be
15 corresponding with a lot of people. Of course, I
16 suppose you haven’t ruled on the 400 series yet, so
17 I won’t talk about the content of that. But that
18 was part of the offer there, part of the offer by
19 Mr. Auchincloss.
20 It turns out that that story, that -- he
21 thought he saved the day, so he could be the
22 blockbuster witness. I don’t know what his
23 motivation is. He wants to be the big star witness.
24 He’s a wanna-be cop, he’s a wanna-be this. I don’t
25 know. But he was a liar on the stand. And I don’t
26 say that lightly, and I don’t say that just to
27 insult him.
28 We know that because the weight of all the 9052
1 other evidence in this case indicates that Janet
2 Arvizo didn’t have any idea what Bashir was about
3 when the press started calling her mother’s house on
4 February 4 and February 5. She doesn’t have any
5 idea. She had no idea. There is no contest on
6 that. Jay Jackson, Major Jay Jackson confirms that.
7 That’s when the press comes around, on February 5,
8 and he tries to get them to pay him money, and they
9 eventually offer $15,000, and it’s not enough.
10 That’s February 5. Nothing is happening on
11 February 1. Nothing is happening on February 2.
12 Nothing is happening on February 3. He created
13 these notes to make himself a key witness in this
14 case. And that’s why, when I say Mr. Jackson is
15 entitled to no more, but no less fairness than
16 anybody else, and I don’t care if I’m standing here
17 representing another client who has absolutely no
18 status as a celebrity or status in any other regard,
19 I would make the same argument. He is entitled to
20 have this Court determine if there are witnesses
21 lying up there, and they’re willfully false, that
22 their testimony should be disregarded, and when you
23 look at the whole body of evidence, reject it and
24 grant the 1118.1.
25 Now, to make matters worse, he tried to lie
26 about that further by saying, well, it was because
27 of the transcript. And you recall that the
28 transcrip - or the report - it was unclear whether 9053
1 it was a transcript or a report that he went
2 through - Mr. Mesereau asked him, “Well, you went
3 through two weeks ago and you started adding
4 ‘Michael Jackson’ to everything.”
5 “Well, I made corrections as to spelling.”
6 “Well, you added ‘Michael Jackson.’ You
7 added some other things.”
8 “Well, I did add that.”
9 He manufactured all this, and he
10 manufactured this story that was the script. The
11 problem is that we all know from this evidence -- if
12 we don’t know anything else, we know from this
13 evidence that Janet Arvizo had absolutely no
14 knowledge of a script from the Bashir film
15 whatsoever. And she didn’t even know about the
16 Bashir film airing in England and she didn’t even
17 see the Bashir film when it came out on February 6th
18 in the United States. And so it is much more
19 consistent -- not “much more.” It’s -- the only
20 thing that’s consistent with the facts that you’ve
21 seen from multiple witnesses is that after the 6th
22 and it was shown, the Bashir tape was shown in the
23 United States, did Mr. Schaffel get himself back
24 into the group.
25 And remember, he was sent a letter -- and
26 this Witness Provencio tried to make fun of the
27 lawyer, Zia Modabber. He was sent a letter,
28 Schaffel was sent a letter saying, “Stay away from 9054
1 Michael Jackson,” and his -- he was trying to get
2 back into Michael Jackson’s world, like everybody
3 does, to try to be a part of this celebrity world
4 and get the benefits and make money behind Mr.
5 Jackson’s back or with his -- with his approval in
6 some regard, make money, make yourself a big wheel.
7 That’s what he was trying to do. We had that
8 testimony.
9 And in his original statement to the police,
10 he was clear it was after the Bashir tape aired in
11 the United States on February the 6th, and that’s
12 the only thing that would be consistent. Not that
13 Marc Schaffel or anybody else were making
14 conspiratorial statements, let alone the other
15 things he attributed to them in the February 1st and
16 the February 2nd calls. That’s absolutely false.
17 It’s a lie. It couldn’t have happened. But it’s
18 not only a lie, but it’s a lie by somebody who came
19 in here and manufactured notes to give to the
20 prosecution, who gave them to the defense, and we
21 all sat and looked at his notes, and that was false
22 evidence, a felony violation of Penal Code Section
23 134. The man should be prosecuted for that, and
24 we’ve seen people prosecuted for a lot less.
25 So when you look at that, he is the only
26 witness that they’ve been using to try to somehow
27 tie Michael Jackson into some kind of a conspiracy
28 by saying, “Well, he was on the phone. Well, I 9055
1 listened to all the phone calls.”
2 “Oh, you did?”
3 “Well, because he had them on speaker.”
4 And “Marc Schaffel was a terrible person.
5 He was very happy to put down anybody he wanted to.”
6 And then he went into his own office, and he picked
7 up the phone and he listened in secretly to calls.
8 That testimony can’t be believed. That man
9 never said Michael Jackson had anything to do with
10 anything. And in fact, he had told others that
11 Michael Jackson didn’t know what was going on.
12 He comes into court to be a hero for the
13 prosecution. And they put him up, and I choose to
14 think they put him up unwittingly. I don’t suggest
15 they put him up deliberately saying, “Get up there
16 and lie.” But at some point they had to know he was
17 lying.
18 And I’ll tell you what. There was something
19 that was very telling. Mr. Mesereau asked Mr.
20 Provencio, after this incredible testimony that any
21 lawyer, like Mr. Zonen, who knows the facts of this
22 case, would have to see is not only improbable, but
23 it’s a lie. And the one question was, “What did Mr.
24 Zonen ask you at the break?”
25 “He asked me if I was telling the truth.”
26 Don’t you think that any lawyer in his right
27 mind would have asked that witness, “Are you telling
28 the truth?” And might have asked him a few more 9056
1 questions like, “How in the world could you possibly
2 do that?”
3 I’m disappointed that they tried to
4 rehabilitate him after that, and they didn’t
5 succeed. I’m disappointed in that. I would expect
6 them to say, “This man is lying, and we want to
7 withdraw his testimony.”
8 Even defense lawyers, because defense
9 lawyers are always picked on, and prosecutors have a
10 higher standard when it comes to some things, but
11 lawyers, as lawyers, have certain high standards we
12 have to abide by. The Court’s well aware that even
13 when a defendant takes the stand, over the objection
14 of counsel, and wants to say something untrue, a
15 defense lawyer has an obligation not to -- not to
16 aid and abet in that, even though it’s an exercise
17 of a Constitutional right by a defendant. Any
18 lawyer, prosecution or defense, has an obligation to
19 not try to rehabilitate somebody who’s gotten up
20 there and lied through his teeth so clearly and
21 emphatically. There’s just no way around it.
22 Now, having said all of those things, when
23 you put all of that in context, that’s why it
24 says -- that’s why I say it makes the Court’s job
25 easier or less hard, because I know it’s a hard task
26 to perform.
27 If this wasn’t the Michael Jackson case, I
28 don’t think the prosecution would have tried 9057
1 anything, and the prosecution would have said,
2 “You’re lying. We want to stop. Let’s disclose
3 this to the Court and let’s have a hearing. Let’s
4 do something. Let’s dismiss the case.” But they
5 went ahead and they’re going ahead, and they’re
6 going to get up after I sit down and they’re going
7 to argue these people weren’t lying, I suppose.
8 It’s up to the Court to look at this and
9 say, “We cannot permit this case to go any further.”
10 Why? The jury may well see it the same way, and I
11 think they probably do, to a certain extent.
12 They’re not lawyers. They don’t know all the rules.
13 They don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do
14 yet.
15 At the end of the case, they may well do the
16 right thing and acquit Mr. Jackson, but they might
17 not, because they might be moved by the innuendo.
18 They might be moved by the 1108 evidence in
19 particular. That is extremely dangerous. It’s
20 extremely dangerous in this case where it is
21 propping up people who are witnesses willfully
22 false.
23 So I’d ask the Court to grant the 1118.1
24 motion as to the conspiracy count and as to all the
25 other counts.
26 Thank you.
27 THE COURT: Thank you, Mr. Sanger.
28 On behalf of the People? 9058
1 MR. SNEDDON: Be right with you, Your Honor.
2 First of all, Your Honor, let me address the
3 question that we began discussing with Mr. Sanger at
4 the beginning of his remarks.
5 I believe Mr. Sanger is wrong in the law.
6 I believe his interpretation of the law with regard
7 to what the Court’s responsibility is with regard to
8 this motion is incorrect. And while I believe
9 that -- that that was a nice final argument that Mr.
10 Sanger made, unfortunately, the point that we are at
11 with regard to an 1118 motion is after a defendant
12 has been convicted. And at that point is there
13 substantial evidence to support the conviction,
14 drawing all favorable inferences in favor of the
15 jury’s verdict. That’s the standard.
16 And I cite to the Court two cases that
17 clearly set forth that standard. The first case is
18 People vs. Cuevas, C-u-e-v-a-s. It’s a 1995 case at
19 12 Cal.4 252. And then there’s a rather recent
20 case -- and that’s at page 260, if I didn’t indicate
21 that, Your Honor.
22 And then there’s a more recent case which is
23 called People vs. Coffman, with a C, f-f-m-a-n, and
24 Marlo, M-a-r-l-o, which is found at 34 Cal.1 at page
25 90.
26 Both of those cases make it very clear that
27 the Court is not in a position on an 1118 to make
28 credibility issues and decisions, but only to decide 9059
1 whether or not there is substantial evidence that
2 the jury believe the evidence was credible. And so
3 that’s a considerably different matter than what
4 Mr. Sanger was urging upon the Court.
5 Having that in mind, what we have to do is
6 assume, it’s a starting point, that every argument
7 that Mr. Sanger just made to you, that he would have
8 made to the jury, and the jury didn’t believe it or
9 didn’t find it persuasive, and convicted the client
10 in any case, and are there reasonable inferences in
11 what remains in the testimony and the evidence that
12 supports the reasons that the jury found against
13 everything Mr. Sanger just stood here and told you?
14 That’s where we really are in this case.
15 Having said that, I’d like to begin with a
16 little bit of analysis, first of all. And I won’t
17 spend much time on it, but I think it’s important to
18 put things in perspective in terms of the law of
19 conspiracy in light of some of the things that Mr.
20 Sanger said.
21 There are three charges here. One charge of
22 conspiracy, with an allegation of three particular
23 crimes that were involved: Extortion, false
24 imprisonment and child abduction.
25 Now, I share, in one respect, Mr. Sanger’s
26 notion that there is a double agreement and a double
27 intent that’s required to commit this crime. And I
28 do not take exception with that. However, I do take 9060
1 exception with this little bit of selective memory
2 in terms of the rest of the law on conspiracy.
3 For Mr. Jackson to be guilty of the
4 conspiracy does not require him to be the puppet at
5 the top of this, moving all the strings to the
6 little puppets below. It requires that in whatever
7 role Mr. Jackson plays in the conspiracy, that he
8 does so with the intent to commit the crimes that
9 are alleged and he does so with the intent that
10 there be a conspiracy to commit those crimes. All
11 he needs to do is share in the overall goal of the
12 conspiracy; that is, that there was an attempt to
13 conceal or an agreement. Not an attempt, but it was
14 an agreement to conceal or to falsely imprison, to
15 abduct and to extort.
16 The crime of conspiracy is unique, because
17 it does not require that the crime actually be
18 committed or accomplished. And that’s why we have a
19 whole series of overt acts. And that’s why the law
20 of conspiracy is set forth in the instructions to
21 the jury as they need not find that these crimes
22 were actually committed, only that there was an
23 agreement and an intent and a conspiracy to commit
24 these crimes, and there was at least one -- one
25 overt act done towards the commission of the goals
26 of that crime.
27 Now, that’s the law of conspiracy. That’s
28 the proper perspective for which this case and this 9061
1 1118 motion needs to be heard.
2 And it’s a fundamental principle of the law
3 of conspiracy that when you have many people
4 involved in a conspiracy, that many people have
5 different roles. And I don’t think we have to
6 stretch very far if you just take the common analogy
7 sometimes that I’m sure this Court is familiar with,
8 and I don’t mean this in any disrespect to Mr.
9 Jackson, but I’m only using it as an analogy. The
10 one that comes before us more often than not, if you
11 look at those cases that this Court has seen and if
12 you look at the cases on the laws of narcotics and
13 drug cases, and when you try to get to the top of
14 the cartel, you try to move to the top of the big
15 sellers, oftentimes what you’re talking about is
16 moving through other people through that syndicate
17 that’s reflective of what the agreement is at the
18 top. It doesn’t mean that the person at the top
19 doesn’t know or share in the agreement of what the
20 people are doing down below.
21 So I think that the attempt by the defense
22 to portray Mr. Jackson as somehow being the
23 mastermind behind the conspiracy is a false attempt.
24 It is not something that we’ve alleged during the
25 entire time that we’ve tried this case to the jury
26 and the time we put this case on to the grand jury,
27 or the time that we talked with you at the 995.
28 The fact of the matter is, Mr. Jackson had a 9062
1 role. The fact of the matter is, I’m going to point
2 to you evidence that shows that he was in agreement.
3 The fact of the matter is that he was the
4 beneficiary of everything that happened in this
5 case.
6 And it’s not necessary that the -- that they
7 succeed in their attempts to falsely imprison, or to
8 abduct the children, or to extort something out of
9 someone, although I do believe that there is strong
10 evidence that they did succeed in certain extents in
11 all of those goals, as I will point out.
12 Now, I’d like to start, first of all, and I
13 want to say that there’s another thing that I think
14 needs to be said to the Court. There’s another
15 fundamental principle of the cases that interpret
16 the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a
17 conviction on appeal that deals with how you prove a
18 conspiracy.
19 Lord knows nobody is dumb enough to get
20 together and have five or six or seven or two or
21 three people sign a contract and say, “We’re going
22 to go out and commit these crimes, and I agree to do
23 this, and you agree to do this, and he agrees to do
24 this.” Nobody does that. I dare say that all the
25 time you’ve been on the bench, you’ve never heard of
26 a conspiracy where they had a contract and they
27 walked in here and showed you everybody agreed by
28 way of contract to do this. 9063
1 And that’s why the case law in California is
2 replete with cases that demonstrate over and over
3 and over again that the thing that you look for on
4 the substantial evidence review is, is there
5 association? Is there a way to link these people
6 together in some common purpose? Is there a motive
7 among the people? Are the goals and the acts of the
8 people reasonably calculated to accomplish what is
9 alleged to be the goals of the conspiracy?
10 And that’s where I think our starting point
11 has to be. What’s the motive in this particular
12 case?
13 The motive of Mr. Jackson is clear. The
14 Bashir tape, and even Mr. Sanger, to an extent,
15 admitted it in his argument to you, the evidence of
16 one thing has been proven in this case so far. The
17 evidence is overwhelming that this was a death
18 threat to his career. He was hemorrhaging
19 financially and had been for several years. He had
20 a cash flow problem. And for some reason -- as Mr.
21 Duross indicated, for some reason he couldn’t get
22 out and market himself, and didn’t, or chose not to,
23 to try to do something about this debt.
24 But the Bashir filming was the thing that
25 was just the last stroke that was going to end his
26 career if something wasn’t done immediately to turn
27 that around.
28 Now, sure, some people are going to make 9064
1 money off that. There’s no reason that some of
2 these people involved in trying to resurrect his
3 career couldn’t make money in a venture trying to
4 resurrect it. There’s no reason why these people
5 involved in this couldn’t benefit from being
6 associated with whatever was left of Mr. Jackson’s
7 career, and to the extent that they were able to
8 resurrect his career, to benefit by being on the
9 inner circle.
10 But the motive was to resurrect his career.
11 And that’s what was clear, that the only person who
12 really benefited first, foremost, was the defendant
13 in this case, Michael Joe Jackson.
14 It’s totally unrealistic to believe that at
15 this particular point in time, when his entire
16 career, his entire financial situation, his entire
17 entertainment, his entire record career is on the
18 line, that Mr. Jackson is going to sit on the
19 sidelines, allow people to come in from the outside,
20 run his career, what’s left of it, and try to
21 salvage it without knowing what’s going on.
22 And one thing that has also been proven
23 here, I believe, that there’s substantial evidence
24 that Mr. Jackson is a hands-on person. He likes to
25 get involved to some extent and to be informed, and
26 likes to make the ultimate decisions as to what’s
27 going on. He’s been described as the captain of the
28 ship. And I think that the evidence that 9065
1 circumstantially has been shown here establishes
2 that just to be the case here, and I want to start
3 to just direct the Court’s attention to some of the
4 things that I think are important.
5 First of all, I think we need to comment on
6 the associates themselves. These are people that
7 came in from different places. One’s from Canada.
8 One’s from Germany. Mr. Schaffel is local. Mr.
9 Schaffel had a history. Mr. Tyson had been a
10 friend, a close family friend, and his family has
11 been a close family friend of the defendant’s for
12 years. Absolute years.
13 Now, who is it that’s involved the most in
14 actually executing many of the overt acts in this
15 case? Frank Tyson. Frank Tyson, the defendant’s
16 closest friend, is the person who’s out there doing
17 many, many, many of these overt acts. Who’s at the
18 ranch hanging out with the defendant while all this
19 conduct is being conducted? Frank Tyson. And his
20 friend, Vinnie, that he brought in to help him do
21 all of these things.
22 You look at the phone analyses that were
23 presented to the jury in this case, and you look
24 through the key times when things are going on, like
25 when the Arvizos left on the 12th, and the video on
26 the 19th and the 20th, there are very few phone
27 calls up there of Marc Schaffel. The majority of
28 the calls are going back and forth between the 9066
Subject: May 5, 2005 
Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:22 am
