Verdict Reached in Jackson Case

I wanna work from home now.

HE SHOOTS HE SCORES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think his career's pretty much finished no matter what though. He may attempt a few other "comeback specials"/shows but he's just gonna be an embarassment to most of the music industry.

Still wanna see the nose melt

i'm going to say he walks or he's guilty on the last nine counts (not the conspiracy one.)

http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_nov2003/JacksonOnRun.jpg

(hides)

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/LAW/06/13/jackson.trial/top.jackson.wed.ap.jpg

other victims - if they exist - had every reason to come forward and no reason not to: that they didn't...

well i said before - one of the few moments shakey and me fully agreed abt this whole thing - that WHATEVER the outcome of the trial, everyone wd go on believing what they believed before

i guess I just have to get big enough clogs, buy enough padding, and a transmitter, and I could make a really classy noise shoe.

xpost - banana, only if r. kelly is available to collaborate.

OTM. Is there something in the ILX water that makes people antsy if they don't vocally declare themselves to be part of an irrational lynch mob?

a conclusion borne out by the reactions on this very thread, I might add.

Also, you totally know that R Kelly would already be in the studio by now if this were his case, which is why Kelly is the superior artist: he is in love with his muse & its thirst for the public

no reason other than the shame & trauma of being sexually molested, the pressure of testimony and cross-examination, the publicity circus etc. seems obvious that his accusers could be hustling MJ for money, the mother lying and conniving and the child contradiciting himself, the presecution zealous and overreaching yet nevertheless SOME molestation still occurred. as JBR put it above "courts are for deciding whether people are proven guilty" (my italics)

prediction: MJ will get religion and re-emerge as a musical minister for children, the reverend peter pan. or he will slowly fade into decadent obscurity, indulging his bent in Bangkok alongside Gary Glitter.

wha?!?

I frame the moral weight of the issue this way: which is worse, the destruction of an innocent rich man's life, or the the destruction of numerous children's sexuality/psyches? I say the latter is worse, and insofar as Michael Jackson talks, acts, lives, and behaves like many convicted pedophiles I err on the side of his being guilty. I have no legal power to enforce this pronouncement, and what's more, don't even think I *should* have that power - so my thoughts on the matter are by and large purely abstract. I like to think that this does not make me any less of one of the "thoughtful, smart folks" on ILM, nor does it make me part of some bloodthirsty mob.

Moreover, ilx is full of people who've spent loads of time thinking about pop music. The case of Michael Jackson is so ripe with ambiguous, odd lessons about success & American culture: exactly such lessons as aren't exactly news to pop music obsessives, or shouldn't be, anyhow.

Hell no. Whether the guy is a molester or not, he obviously doesn't have a lick of common sense.

It would have been awesome if she had bit the head off of one dove per guilty verdict!

I don't think anybody here's actually said this or drawn conclusions that way. Many that think he's a pedophile, myself included, have noted that the particular case they were prosecuting here was weak and that he probably wasn't guilty of these particular acts that he was accused of.

nb: no, I'm not saying "every jury verdict rules, deal with it!" just: doesn't a jury verdict give one immediate pause, and a chance to examine how one came to one's conclusions about the case? Having worked with molested children & perps many, many times in a therapeutic setting, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say MJ "behaves like one." Most perps keep a real low profile and do their best to appear as normal as possible; the secretive eccentric is a shitty beard to wear if you've got dirty work to do.

well the former has demonstrably occurred

as for the second, dude you should alert the media, they would be very interested in these numerous children's tales

I went *way* into this on another thread, but I'm talking about things that are a little more academic than his media portrayal. Shunning adult company for the company of children, the pattern of an initial interest in a child followed by abandonment as they grow older, inability to distinguish childrens' wants/needs from adults' wants/needs, maintaining an environment exclusively designed to attract children, engineering situations to remove children from parents'/guardians care or oversight, inability to discern any moral impropriety involving children (either on their part or on the part of himself), fixation on an idealized youth, etc. Do even a little bit of reading on the psychological make-up and trademark behaviors of pedophiles and you come across these things. Oddly, read up on the life of Michael Jackson and you come across these things as well.

i take lovebug's point abt reasons not to want to take the stand, but by "come forward" i meant "come forward and speak to the DA" really: at which point (once again) it's his job to persuade them to stand

i'm very wary of this "profile"-type stuff: there's a classic recent british case of a v.weird and highly unsavory and plausible loner who "acted, lived, and behaved" like the kind of person experts were convinced WOULD commit a particularly nasty murder they were investigating (ie all the "psychological evdience" pointed to him), and the police loved him for it and attempted an elaborate entrapment designed by one of the uk's top "psychological profilers"

anyway it turns out now very likely the the actual murderer was not only overlooked, but went on to commit a fairly similar murder not long after - while the original suspect, a creepy and unlikeable man for sure, was hounded for years for something he didn't do (the case was thrown out bcz of the entrapment, so he wasn't "properly cleared")

Would this profile produce a potential perp? Sure; might the perping be limited to talking inappropriately with the young men whose company gives him a thrill? Absolutely. There are as many or more fucked-up people who take care of their issues without harming anybody as there are acting-out perps. I suspect that the celebrities who've declined to join in piling-in on him know the sad truth: that MJ's a creepy guy who wants to ask young men about their sex drives & habits, because his own sex drive is broken. And that's sad, and it's also sad that the only broken sex drive we can imagine is one in which the Evil Dude Went Nuts!! etc.

But again, I'm 100% for prosecuting anybody accused of molestation, I don't think MJ's in any way "persecuted.")

I've done more than a little bit of reading, Mo; read my preceding post: I worked in the field for ten-plus fucking years. I'm not shooting from the hip here.

his name is paul br!tton: he is a complete twat

i realise that his very specific annoying uselessness and complete lack of insight does not in fact mean that all psychological evidence is worthless: one should never generalise

-- Tracer Hand (tracerhan...), June 13th, 2005.

i think my point is being borne out

x-post

absolutely - however, obviously this isn't possible for Jackson, and his concept of what constitutes a "low profile" is permanently damaged (ie, "no one will know it's me and my kids if I wear a surgical mask and drape them in black veils!")

well sure I can see that, no doubt & a good point - I'm not saying "he's no way guilty of these things" but that there are many, many scenarios that're as/more probable; our culture doesn't leave us room to describe complex human beings even as it creates painfully complex neuroses like those plainly in evidence in the case of MJ.

some days i feel like they went and changed the meanings of ALL WORDS while i wz asleep

http://www.lunacynet.com/league/images/s1_pauline.jpg

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/14/jackson.trial/index.html

i agree with people who say the US justice system, like all justice systems, is not from infallible. especially if you got the loot. there's something complicated lurking here, something very complicated. it's the can of worms the supreme court is afraid of opening if they outlaw capital punishment on the grounds that there is always a certain percentage of people who are wrongly convicted: it calls into question the very ontology of the courts.

however, i think we owe more generosity towards' the court's opinion when it finds a defendant "not guilty" than we do when the court is meting out punishments, at least in the case of individual people-persons. because one is irrevocable - i.e. 20 years in prison - while the other is not.

From Billboard.com:

Jurors may have acquitted Jackson of all charges of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor, but not all of them were convinced the King of Pop had never molested a child.

"He's just not guilty of the crimes he's been charged with," said Ray Hultman, who told the Associated Press he was one of three people on the 12-person panel who voted to acquit only after the other nine persuaded them there was reasonable doubt about the entertainer's guilt in this particular case.

Prosecutors presented testimony about Jackson's allegedly improper relationships with several boys in the early 1990s, including the son of a maid who testified that Jackson molested him during tickling session between 1987 and 1990. Another, Brett Barnes, took the stand to deny that he was molested during sleepovers at Neverland.

But Hultman said he believed it was likely that both boys had been molested. He said he voted to acquit Jackson in the current case because he had doubts about his current accuser's credibility. "That's not to say he's an innocent man," Hultman, 62, said of Jackson.

I'm guessing MJ's "thinking tree" will be coming in reeeaaall handy over the next few years