It’s pretty hard to take the innocent-until-proven-guilty high road when you rapidly degenerate into unproven accusations and name-calling. In any case, the legel precedent of “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t mean that a person is ACTUALLY innocent until convicted of a crime. Just that jurors PRESUME innocence until the person is proven guilty. Non jurors can presume whatever they want.
Erm, pardon me for a second here, but I don’t understand how you can think that “everyone” will change their minds just because a verdict came in. I still believe OJ’s guilty; getting a “not guilty” there just meant to me that 12 people were swayed by the defense, not that the defendant didn’t do the crime.
Anywho, that being said, I don’t know about MJ. I kind of sit on the fence. I wasn’t surprised with the first few verdicts: he’s a celebrity and I don’t think the jury wanted to “disappoint” him or whatever. What surprised me was that he didn’t get convicted for the misdemeanor counts of serving alcohol to a minor. I thought those ones would come out guilty. (I don’t know why; just had a feeling.) I think he has psychological problems and intense therapy would help him more than a prison sentence would have “helped”. I do think he has behaved extremely inappropriately with some young men, but I also think that he thought that was not an unreasonable thing to do.
On a side note, I had a dream about two weeks ago about making this exact post. I’m giiiifted! 
Damn messy thing, this jury system.
Me thinks he’s guilty of doing this at some point, but I’ll respect that 12 people found him not guilty in this case.
Bah, this whole “money bought the verdict” thing is already getting annoying.
Did you guys not watch the case? The prosecution case was WEAK. Virtually all analysts agree on that. There was an element of reasonable doubt and, in America, that means you cannot convict.
Did he really do it? Dunno. Should he have been found guilty? Maybe. Should he have been found guilty based on the actual case? Hell no.
Years later, long after this is all over, a thread like this might be kept calm enough for MPSIMS, but right now–as evidenced by a lot of posts already–it’s nothing but high octane Pit fuel.
Sorry, Fear Itself, I hope you weren’t holding on to this as your best of best MPSIMS threads.
- SkipMagic Jackson (P.Y.T. - Pittable Young Thing)
You’re making ME cry.
Board rules forbid me from telling how I REALLY feel right now.
How about them? Jay Leno told the police that he thought they were digging for money, but and testified that he believed that the kid was being coached on what to say. Chris Tucker called the police because he figured he was being conned, and testified to that effect.
The family already got a settlement from J.C. Penny in a bizarre case in which which sexual abuse by several security guards was alleged. The whole thing stunk to high heaven.
The dissonance that you are experiencing is because you are only measuring the verdict against your own preconceptions, not the actual evidence presented to the jury.
I think most people were convinced of MJ’s pedophilia years ago after he unwisely allowed himself to be interviewed for British television and frankly discussed his predilictions. There was, for all the strikes against some of the witnesses, a fair amount of eyewitness testimony of pedophile behavior; there’s also the possession of “artistic” child nude photo books, etc. It doesn’t have to go so far as “fucking little boys”; just offering access to child porn to a kid should suffice for prosecutorial purposes.
A correction: some of the charges bore different standards of proof for a guilty verdict. The less serious charges didn’t require “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” but merely “a preponderance” (i.e., 51% likelihood) of guilt. Or so the jury was instructed going into deliberations, as they were saying on MSNBC… One of their experts was explaining that he thought that the jury might have difficulty understanding that distinction as it applied to the various charges throughout their deliberations.
I’m still flabbergasted. Even some of the experts who were saying that a lot of acquittals were likely still believed he’d be found guilty on at least one of the minor charges (easiest conviction on one of the serving-alcohol-to-a-minor ones).
I’m still flabbergasted.
With all due respect, it’s not only little boys that get molested. Far from.
Not me. I don’t really care if he molested kittens or hand-fed squirming baby chicks to half-crazed-with-hunger orphans. What he may/may not have done later doesn’t–for me–affect his Thriller album. Reasonable people might disagree about whether the music was good based on its quality, but I don’t feel his actions after the album’s release should influence that judgement.
I don’t claim to know exactly what happened. You don’t know exactly what happened. The jury doesn’t know exactly what happened. We all have nothing more than beliefs, based on whatever portion of the evidence we’ve seen and heard. The only difference is that the jury’s beliefs carry the weight of law. But let’s keep it in perspective: The jury has no more psychic abilities to know what happened than anyone else.
I believe he molested little boys. Do I know that? No. But I and everyone else who believes that are as entitled to that belief as you are to your beliefs. I’ve seen no one suggesting that we abandon the justice system, but that doesn’t mean that we have to roll over and agree with every verdict.
I believe that the prosecution had a weak case that was then crippled by all the money Jackson had to throw at his defense. I have no doubt that, had the same “weak” case been made against a person of ordinary means, the verdict would have been substantially different.
When I first saw her, I thought it was Martha Stewart. Now that would have been interesting TV!
Golly gee whiz. Twelve people who sat and listened verbatim to the testimony. Saw the actual witnesses somehow got it all wrong.
Yet those of you here on this board that got all of your evidence from media sources just know he was guilty.
:rolleyes:
I for one am not surprised. From what I could gather, the evidence was insufficient and I certainly wouldn’t want him jailed on the least pretext. What kind of precedent would that set?
On the other hand, I do believe he did it. But the fault lies pretty highly with the kids’ moms, too…who the fuck lets their kid go to a suspected pedophile’s house and stay the night?
I called it.
I believe that he did it, but if I were a juror and convicted him on the word of a grifter and her family I’d soon be hanging from the nearest lamppost. They couldn’t prove it, and that’s the bottom line.
This is strike two for this DA. There has been a lot of theorising in the news that the DA out there only brought these charges because he was pissed that he couldn’t get Jackson in 1993 and has been obsessing about nailing him ever since. I dunno about all that, but I do know that he needs to let it go. Michael Jackson can now do anything he wants to do up to sucking 6 year old cock on video and he can’t be touched. We have an overzealous DA to thank for that.
With all due respect, do you not see how your experience might create a bias against anyone accused of child molestation? Do you honestly think you could sit on a jury and objectively consider evidence in such a case?
Ok…so new sitcom.
Charles Manson, Michael and MARTHA!
C’mon, it’d be HILARIOUS!
They just asked Sneddon if this is the end of his pursuit of Jackson…he laughed and said he didn’t know.
He had no child erotica.
He had regular, plain vanilla, adult porn.
The one item that featured photos of nude boys was not kept with his porn, and can’t really be called “erotica.” It’s a photodiary called “The Boy,” which documents the making of the film The Lord of the Flies.
“Hang him!” :rolleyes:
The evidence and history in this case goes far beyond a mere accusation.