Untouchable

by Randall Sullivan

  Janet admitted to Mesereau that she had lied under oath; it was in fact her husband who had beaten her and Gavin. Mesereau also pointed out that each of the woman’s children had testified on the witness stand at this trial that it had been their father who abused them and their mother, and that Janet Arvizo had obtained multiple restraining orders against her ex-husband. Gavin in fact had once accused his mother of assaulting him also, triggering an investigation by the Department of Children and Family Services. Janet’s attempts at answering these questions became more and more incoherent, a series of non sequiturs that bore little connection to the questions she had been asked. She turned to speak directly to the jury several times and addressed Michael Jackson personally on a number of occasions.

  As Mesereau excoriated Janet Arvizo for her ingratitude to Michael Jackson after all the man had done for her and for her family, the witness was roused to the first comprehensible reply she had made during the past two hours. Janet Arvizo’s voice rose when she insisted that Michael Jackson “really didn’t care about children, he just cared about what he was doing with the children.” Glaring at the defendant, she continued, “He’s managed to fool the world. Now, because of this criminal case, now people know who he really is.”

  After watching Janet Arvizo’s disintegration under cross-examination, Sneddon recognized that the time had come to play his ace in the hole—Debbie Rowe. Other than their fear that Jordan Chandler would show up in court, Mesereau and the defense team were more concerned about the testimony of Michael’s ex-wife than they were with any other part of the prosecution case. What Mesereau, his associates, and their client knew that neither the media nor the public did was that Debbie had been working with Santa Barbara County law enforcement for months to prepare the criminal case against Jackson. She had provided Sneddon and his investigators with dozens of documents and scores of names and dates—anything they wanted. Most alarming was that Rowe had cooperated with Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies to tape numerous phone conversations with the various “unindicted coconspirators,” including at least a half-dozen with Marc Schaffel. Caught up in the excitement and drama of playing her part in an undercover police investigation, Debbie (who referred to the man she was dating at the time as “a murder cop”) had described her ex-husband to the deputies as a shallow narcissist who saw his children as mere possessions, barely more real to him than the mannequins who populated the hallways at Neverland. As far as the kids who visited the ranch, Debbie added, they were nothing more than playthings to Michael, animated, life-size toys that he discarded as soon as they ceased entertaining him.

  Mesereau had prepared twenty notebooks filled with the material he intended to use for his cross-examination of Michael’s ex-wife, more than for any other single witness. “But moments after Debbie got on the stand, I started to push that pile of notebooks away,” the attorney recalled. “I could see that as soon as she took one look at Michael, everything changed. The reality of it all hit her. It wasn’t a game anymore. He was vulnerable, and she didn’t want to hurt him.”

  Zonen knew he was in trouble only a few minutes after beginning his direct examination of Rowe. Debbie acknowledged speaking to Michael Jackson about appearing in the rebuttal video, but said there was no discussion of what she would say. Sneddon had promised in his opening statement that Jackson’s ex-wife would characterize her participation in the rebuttal video as “completely scripted,” but Rowe did exactly the opposite on the witness stand. Asked to describe her conversation with Michael Jackson, Debbie replied, “I asked him how he was. I asked him how the children were. And I asked if I could see them when everything settled down,” she recalled. When Michael asked if she would appear in what became the rebuttal video, “I said, as always, yes,” Debbie told Zonen. “I was excited to see Michael and the children when all this was over. I promised I would always be there for him and the children.” Before arriving in court today, she had not seen Michael, Debbie admitted, since the day of the last divorce hearing in 1999. She had not seen Prince or Paris in that time, either. She came across as sad, but not angry.

  Rowe described arriving at Marc Schaffel’s house in Calabasas for the taping of the rebuttal video on February 5, 2003, accompanied by attorney Iris Finsilver, who had remained with her the entire time. When Zonen asked if she was given a script, Debbie answered tersely, “No.” But she had been given a list of questions, Zonen asked, and moved forward in anticipation when she answered yes. The prosecutor was back on his heels a moment later, though, when Debbie added that she never looked at the list of questions and that nothing she said on the rebuttal video had been scripted. “I didn’t want anyone to be able to come back to me and say my interview was rehearsed,” she explained. “As Mr. Jackson knows, no one can tell me what to say.”

  Mesereau probed the subject of Debbie Rowe’s legal dispute with Michael Jackson, but with a gentle approach that bore no resemblance to the attack for which he had prepared. Debbie’s eyes filled with tears as she gazed at Michael during her questioning on the subject, as if trying to communicate how saddened she was that it had come to this. Her expression was a plea for acknowledgment. Michael refused to give it. “He knew she had betrayed him by working with the police,” Mesereau recalled, “and he was not ready to forgive her for it.”

  Michael’s attorney, though, recognized that Debbie was trying to do all she could to make amends. Rowe denounced the “unindicted coconspirators,” Konitzer, Wiesner, and Schaffel in particular, as a pack of predators whose strategy was to give Michael Jackson as little information as possible about what they were up to. “In my past knowledge, [Michael is] removed from the handlers, the people who are taking care of business, and they make all the decisions, and there are many times when they don’t consult him,” Debbie said. “And you thought these three guys, Schaffel, Dieter, and Konitzer, were doing just that, didn’t you?” Mesereau asked. “Very strongly,” answered Debbie, who moments later described the three as “opportunistic vultures.” She was especially tough on Schaffel, the only one of the three with whom she could claim anything like a friendship. Marc had boasted more than once about saving Michael’s career, and making millions for himself in the process, she recalled scornfully: “He just bragged about how he had taken advantage of an opportunity. He said he was going to make sure Michael’s career was saved. He’s like everybody else around Mr. Jackson. He wouldn’t tell him everything. Obviously, he’s full of shit.”

  Debbie finished by telling Mesereau that everything she had said on the rebuttal video was honest and spontaneous, that she wanted the world to know that Michael Jackson was a good father, a family man at heart, and someone she still cared about. She gave her ex-husband one more imploring glance, but Michael still seemed to be looking through her.

  21

  On May 5, 2005, when the procecution rested its case in People v. Michael Joe Jackson, Mesereau asked for a recess to consider whether he should bother with putting on a defense. “I was pretty confident that we had at least a hung jury,” he explained. “It was all over the faces of several jurors. But when I thought about it, I realized that a hung jury and a mistrial was not the outcome we wanted. I was certain that Sneddon would refile, and I was pretty sure that the next trial would be much tougher for us. I knew the judge was on the prosecution’s side, and that he was unlikely to make some of the rulings that had helped us the first time around if there was a second trial. The prosecution would have been educated about the weaknesses of its case and would be much better prepared the second time around. Also, I was hearing from Randy Jackson and everyone else around Michael that he didn’t have it in him to survive a second trial. I could see myself that it was true. Michael was getting weaker day by day. He wasn’t eating. He went to the hospital several times.” The only place Michael could sleep, Grace Rwaramba explained, was in a hospital room.

  The strain was wearing Mesereau down as well. He was waking up at 3:30 every morning to a new stack of filings, report
s, and information that were added to the tens of thousands of pages of documents already generated by the case of People v. Jackson. He had been braced for months against his possible dismissal as Michael Jackson’s attorney. Randy Jackson had told him that Mark Geragos was pressing relentlessly to be reinstated, warning that Mesereau had no real concept of what a high-profile trial required. The three-ring circus of chaos that engulfed Michael Jackson was also a constant distraction. The wall of the sentry post at the entrance to Neverland was covered with the photographs of various undesirables, accompanied by captions like, “Has been loitering near the gate,” “Believes she is married to Mr. Jackson,” and “Might be armed.”

  Some of these same people had infiltrated the “Caravan of Love” formed by Michael’s supporters outside the courthouse, who were every bit as obsessive as Mesereau had been told they would be. Amid the Michael Jackson impersonators and the women who claimed to be the real Billie Jean were hundreds of lost souls who had made the pilgrimage to Santa Maria from all over the world, people for whom being Michael Jackson fans was the most consuming reality of their lives. The wailing, shrieking, and sobbing that rose from this crowd each morning as Michael emerged from the big black Suburban that delivered him to the courthouse charged the atmosphere with some weird blend of dread and delirium. The congratulations he could expect if he won this case, the defense attorney knew, would be short-lived by comparison to the condemnations that would follow him for the rest of his days if he lost it.

  For Mesereau, who had refused to speak to the media from the beginning of the trial, the realization that some version of the mad scene surrounding the courthouse had been Michael Jackson’s reality since he was ten years old engendered both pity and exhilaration. In this alternate universe of supercelebrity, it seemed at once perverse and appropriate that more than half the crowd was composed of the twenty-two hundred reporters, producers, and researchers who had been credentialed by the Santa Barbara County authorities. Since only thirty-five of them a day would be seated in the courtroom, the rest loitered amid the sea of media tents, ready to chase down anyone who would serve them up a dollop of drama.

  From the start of the trial, most of the distractions Mesereau had dealt with were produced by people who were supposed to be on his side. “Michael himself was the nicest client Susan and I have ever had,” Mesereau said. “The problem was the people around him. A lot of the time, we were more at war with our own camp than with the other side. Celebrities in general tend to be surrounded by those that try to keep them off balance, to keep them scared, as a way to create a reason they’re needed. And Michael Jackson was probably the biggest target ever of those types of people.” Mesereau included Raymone Bain, Jesse Jackson, and Grace Rwaramba prominently among those “types,” and was increasingly concerned that certain members of the Jackson family had become the instruments of other parasites that were attempting to attach themselves to his client.

  “That’s what’s so exhausting about a high-profile case,” Mesereau recalled. “You have to spend half your time dealing with things that have nothing to do with the actual trial happening in the courtroom.”

  Convinced as he was that the prosecution had failed to make its case in court, Mesereau had to admit his doubts. “You think you know, but you’re not sure that you know,” he explained. “I don’t believe there’s a lawyer alive who hasn’t been surprised by a jury’s verdict. Plus, Sneddon looked like he thought he had won the case, and the reporters were all fawning over him like they thought so, too.”

  Mesereau’s dismantlement of Gavin Arvizo on cross-examination went almost entirely unreported on television or in newspapers. Big-city tabloids actually bannered proclamations that the testimony of the “victim” had cooked Jackson’s goose. “SICKO!” howled the New York Daily News headline. “Jacko: Now Get Out of This One” gloated the New York Post. In London the Sun article describing Gavin Arvizo’s appearance as a witness ran under the heading, “He’s Bad, He’s Dangerous, He’s History,” while the Mirror made its headline into a veritable endorsement of the accuser’s story: “He Said If Boys Don’t Do It They Might Turn into Rapists: Cancer Boy Gavin Tells Court of Jacko Sex.”

  For reporters like Diane Dimond and Maureen Orth, the revelation of Janet Arvizo’s sleazy character served as little more than further evidence of Michael Jackson’s guilt. “As I watched the mother on the stand,” Orth wrote for Vanity Fair, “one thing seemed clear to me: Michael Jackson would probably never have spent more than a moment’s time with this poor, dysfunctional family if he hadn’t had an ulterior motive.” Dimond chipped in with a New York Post article in which she pointed out that, “Pedophiles don’t target kids with Ozzie and Harriet parents.”

  Mesereau tried not to hear the roar of impending doom sounding all around him, but that was not entirely possible. The attorney saw little choice but to mute the assurances he wanted to offer his client. “I felt sure I was right about where the case stood, but I wouldn’t have been doing my job if I hadn’t admitted that I could be wrong,” Mesereau reflected. He was “terribly tempted” to rest without offering a defense case, the attorney said: “I knew Michael desperately wanted this to be over, but at the same time he understood that his life literally depended on the outcome of this trial.”

  The knowledge of the sentence he faced had overwhelmed Michael from the day the grand jury returned its indictment. “Discussing the specifics of that was probably the hardest part of the whole thing,” Mesereau recalled. “The numbers were just so scary to Michael.” If convicted on all charges, Jackson would be sentenced to at least eighteen years and eight months in state prison. Should the “aggravating circumstances” argued by the prosecution be factored in, Judge Melville had the right to impose a sentence of up to fifty-six years in prison.

  “In the end, I decided that the stakes were just too high to do anything less than go all out,” Mesereau decided. “We were going to put on our full defense.”

  Mesereau knew that his case would begin with a devastating rebuttal of the prosecution case that was also a high-risk proposition for the defense. Sneddon had told the jury during his opening statement that they would hear evidence that Michael Jackson had sexually abused five other boys besides Gavin Arvizo, and the prosecutor mentioned each of the five by name. Jordan Chandler’s refusal to testify at trial had reduced Sneddon to the point of attempting to introduce an eleven-year-old document with a motion submitted under the heading: “Plaintiff’s Motion to Admit Evidence that Jordan Chandler had Knowledge of, and Accurately Described Defendant’s Distinctly Blemished Lower Torso and Penis in 1994; Declaration of Thomas W. Sneddon Jr.; Memorandum of Points and Authorities.” In the end, Sneddon was able to call only one of those five boys, Jason Francia, to the stand, and Francia had been, at best, marginally effective. “He came across as someone who thought he deserved $2 million for being tickled,” Mesereau recalled.

  The defense attorney would be widely criticized for putting up as witnesses a series of young men who admitted they had spent the night in Michael Jackson’s bedroom, but as Mesereau recalled, “Three of the five young men whom the prosecution described as ‘Michael Jackson’s other victims’ were willing to testify for the defense that it wasn’t true.”

  Wade Robson was a dancer who had joined Michael Jackson’s world at the age of seven, during the Australian leg of the Bad tour, when he began performing with Michael onstage. Later he appeared in three Jackson music videos, traveling regularly with the star and staying with him at Neverland on and off for more than a decade. Robson was now twenty-two, lean and handsome, a “celebrity choreographer,” according to the tabloid press, who was best known for being sexually involved with Britney Spears while she was married to fellow dancer Kevin Federline. He had slept in the same bed with Michael Jackson on approximately twenty separate occasions, Robson told Mesereau on direct examination. When the attorney asked what “activities” he engaged in while staying in Mr. Jackson’s bedroom, Robson replied th
at they mostly played video games or watched movies. “We had pillow fights every now and again,” he added, with a smile. “Mr. Robson, did Michael Jackson ever molest you at any time?” Mesereau asked. “Absolutely not,” the young man answered in a tone that suggested he was more contemptuous of the suggestion than scandalized by it.

  Brett Barnes was considerably more indignant about being named as one of Michael Jackson’s playthings. “Has Mr. Jackson ever molested you?” Mesereau bluntly asked the young Australian shortly after he took the stand.

  “Absolutely not!” Barnes answered loudly. “And I can tell you right now that if he had, I wouldn’t be here right now!”

  “Has Mr. Jackson ever touched you in a sexual way?” Mesereau went on.

  “Never!” Barnes answered with even greater intensity. “I wouldn’t stand for it!”

  “Has Michael Jackson ever touched any part of your body in a way that you thought was inappropriate?” Mesereau continued.

  “Never! It’s not the type of thing I would stand for,” answered Barnes, who seemed barely able to control his fury when Mesereau asked how he felt about being described by prosecutors as one of Michael Jackson’s “victims.”

  “I’m very mad about that,” replied Barnes, who obviously was. “They’re pulling my name through the dirt, and I’m really, really not happy about it.”

  Macaulay Culkin was an even more effective witness. “I can’t tell you how impressed I was by [him],” Mesereau recalled. “I met with him and his attorney and his manager and his agent beforehand, and he was the most relaxed person in the room. The others were all terrified and trying to convince him that it was a terrible idea for him to take the stand, that he shouldn’t do it.” But in the meeting with Mesereau, “Culkin just sort of shrugged and said, ‘Look, if Michael needs me to tell people the truth, then I’m going to do it,’” the attorney recalled. “He was really a stand-up person, just like Chris Tucker—and unlike the rest of Michael’s other so-called celebrity friends.”