If convicted, Michael Jackson could have gone to prison for 18 years. Instead, he blew a kiss to fans outside the courtroom.
The front page of The Washington Post on June 14, 2005, the day after a jury acquitted pop star Michael Jackson on molestation charges. By William Booth William Booth London bureau chief Email Bio Follow March 3 at 7:00 AM On June 13, 2005, Michael Jackson was acquitted on all charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of a 13-year-old boy. Nearly 15 years later, a new documentary, “Leaving Neverland,” looks at allegations that Jackson molested other boys, too.
In comments after the verdict, the jurors did not call Jackson’s young accuser a liar, but the foreman described the teen as programmed by his mother. In the courtroom, fans openly wept, and so did several of the jurors, who later described the scene as filled with emotion and a release of pent-up tensions. Jackson's mother wrapped her arms around Tito, one of her sons. The prosecutors leaned back, as if stunned.
In his remarks after the verdict, a glum Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon said, “Obviously we’re disappointed in the verdict,” but went on to add that “we did the right thing” in pursuing Jackson. “We thought we had a good case.” He denied — again — that he had a vendetta to pursue against the pop star.
In the news conference in the courtroom after the verdict, the jurors described a case that was weak and an accuser and his family, especially his mother, who could not be believed. The prosecution countered that Jackson was an evil puppet master, the orchestrator of a complex conspiracy and a man who spent months grooming his accuser and other young victims with lavish gifts, all-expenses-paid travel and constant phone calls before he began to show them pornographic magazines, give them alcohol and then go in for the assault.
The family sued the JCPenney Co. after the boy was accused of shoplifting, saying that department store security guards roughed them up. They were awarded $152,000 in an out-of-court settlement. The alleged molestation — in which Jackson was accused of fondling himself and the young boy while the two were together in Jackson’s bed — occurred in the aftermath of the documentary filmed in late 2002 by British journalist Bashir, called “Living With Michael Jackson.”
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