So Michael Jackson got off. All the charges brought against him, all the negative press from newspapers and magazines that basically tried him in print, and the jury said "not enough to convict." Is it really something to celebrate?
The jurors decided that there wasn't enough evidence to reach a guilty verdict, but that doesn't mean that he's innocent. Yet, the fact that he liked to have young boys sleep in the same bed with him doesn't mean he's guilty, either. He made the repeated mistake of putting himself in situations where shady business is presumed, whether it happens or not. When a grown man sleeps in the same bed with children (not his own), isn't the first thing that comes to mind that somebody is doing something wrong? Hopefully Michael will learn from this and not leave himself open to such accusations.
At the same time, the prosecutor was like a shark. He smelled blood and wanted to rip into Michael Jackson. Like President W acting against Saddam Hussein to avenge his father after a failed assassination attempt, Sneddon tried to clean up "unfinished business" from 1993 by finding witnesses willing to testify against Jackson just so he could finally put him in jail, or so Sneddon hoped. But Sneddon was so intent to find bodies to put on the witness stand that he apparently didn't do much of a background check. He couldn't have, considering all the things that came out about the accuser's family during the trial. As I said earlier, Jackson may very
well be guilty, but who would believe that coming from someone with a long history of scams and fraud?
This trial was a circus from the very beginning, and the jury acted correctly in not jailing a man just because he's a clown.
We were still living in the Valley when the arrest occurred, and from early on we didn't seem to hear anything - from the media, or a little industry scuttlebut - that resembled hard evidence. From the first few days the prospect of a conviction looked unlikely, and I got sneered at regularly for chanting "innocent until proven guilty" at some folks...
ReplyDeleteIt bugs me when erotic materials found and trotted out as "proof" of bad behavior. I still believe that most people can firmly separate their fantasy life from reality - that people can read or view titillating things without progressively / inevitably trying to recreate them with kids and/or unwilling adults.
The fact that some evil people have possessed erotic material proves nothing about the millions of others who also have it and do not commit crimes (that is, correlation does not prove causation)...
The bigger shocker in this situation is how some parents (note the plural) could be this greedy. Children sleeping in the bed of an adult who's barely an "acquaintance" - and where are the usually oversealous CPS pit-bulls when they're needed?