<section id="module-position-PIdA2yczBos" class="storytopbar-bucket story-headline-module story-story-headline-module">[h=1]Is Michael Jackson on trial in court of public opinion years after death?[/h]</section><section id="module-position-PIdA2yeHfrQ" class="storytopbar-bucket priority-asset-module story-priority-asset-module"></section><section id="module-position-PIdA2yep5Sw" class="storytopbar-bucket story-byline-module story-story-byline-module">
Maria Puente, USA TODAY 6:58 p.m. EDT June 22, 2016
The seventh anniversary of Michael Jackson's death is Saturday, and for his family and fans, it could have been a time for happy reminiscences about his life and career. Not anymore.
New biographies are landing, and a new TV series about the last months of his life is planned. But that's not what made headlines Wednesday.
Instead, Jackson's supporters, including daughter Paris, 18,
were fuming about the re-emergence in the online tabloid
Radar of material found by police in a 2003 search of his Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County and used at his trial on child-molestation charges in 2005.
Jackson was acquitted on 14 felony and misdemeanor charges. But for some, that wasn't the end of the matter, nor was his death from a drug overdose in 2009 at age 50.
"It's a smear campaign," says Tavis Smiley, author of a new biography of Jackson.
"The fans think someone is attempting to retry him once again in the court of public opinion. My conclusion: Michael didn’t live in peace, he didn't die in peace and apparently they're not going to let him rest in peace," Smiley says.
Radar said its review of the police reports, photos and videos showed Neverland was a "sinister house of horrors" where Jackson allegedly stockpiled "images of pornography, animal torture, S&M and gore in a bid to seduce innocent young boys."
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office released a statement denying it had anything to do with releasing the material to the media. The statement said some of the documents appear to be legitimate sheriff's documents but not all.
The Santa Barbara County District Attorney's office did not return calls requesting comment about who released the material or whether it is investigating.
Radar quoted a former prosecutor at Jackson's trial, Ron Zonen, as saying the material proved to him "that Michael was guilty of child molestation,” even though the jury disagreed. Zonen could not be reached for further comment.
Not true, says Jackson's trial lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, who says prosecutors at Jackson's trial "got their (expletive) kicked." Mesereau says he saw all this material at the trial as Jackson's defender, and so did the jury.
"This is a complete waste of time. It was all litigated in 2005," Mesereau says. "It's dated, outrageous and ridiculous information, and it was completely rejected by a jury 11 years ago."
The Jackson estate issued a statement decrying the Radar story as "false."
"Those who continue to shamelessly exploit Michael via sleazy internet "click bait" ignore that he was acquitted by a jury in 2005 on every one of the 14 salacious charges brought against him in a failed witch hunt," the statement said. "Michael remains just as innocent of these smears in death as he was in life even though he isn't here to defend himself. Enough is enough."
Jermaine Jackson, Michael's brother, and Taj Jackson, son of Michael's brother Tito, let loose a torrent of tweets Wednesday condemning Radar ("low-life," "idiots," "imbeciles"), assailing the police "sloppy face-value" case, and marshaling "facts" to disprove the accusations against his brother, such as the judge's assertion that no pornography was ever found and an FBI file on Jackson that supported his innocence.
"In death, Michael still suffers trial by media but his exoneration is enshrined in court transcripts 'journalists' are too lazy to read," Jermaine Jackson tweeted.
Taj Jackson condemned "cyberbullying" and called for a hashtag campaign.
Aphrodite Jones, host of Investigation Discovery’s True Crime with Aphrodite Jones, says she has also seen most of this material, as a journalist who covered the trial (for Fox News) and because afterward she got a court order to look at the evidence used at the trial. There was no pornography, she said.
Is such incriminating evidence existed, she said, prosecutors would have presented it at the trial.
"The 'crime' here is that Michael Jackson's reputation is being further sullied by people going haywire, making it into something extreme, when he was acquitted, he's dead in his grave and he has children who survive and have to suffer the repercussions of this," says Jones, who started out believing the accusations against Jackson but became convinced at the trial that he was innocent. She wrote a book,
Michael Jackson Conspiracy, in 2007 to show why the jury acquitted him.
All this has come up as new biographies of Jackson, timed to the anniversary, have landed, including Smiley's
Before You Judge Me: The Triumph and Tragedy of Michael Jackson’s Last Days (Little, Brown), with co-author David Ritz. Smiley also has teamed with A-list director J.J. Abrams to produce a new mini-series on Jackson's final days, based on the book.
Another book,
83 MINUTES The Doctor, the Damage, and the Shocking Death of Michael Jackson, by Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne (Thomas Dunne Books), looks at the last hour of his life after he slipped into unconsciousness.
Smiley says the Radar story won't change minds about Jackson's guilt or innocence.
"If you think Michael Jackson did it, your point of view is still the same, and if you think he didn't, your point of view is still the same," Smiley says. "Michael's fans didn’t trust (prosecutors and investigators) then, and they don't trust them now."
Still, the Radar story left some questions unanswered: Who gave Radar the files and documents on the Neverland raid? Was it released as a routine matter of public record? If so, can anyone see this material? If it was leaked, was that legal, and is there a leak investigation?
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