I submit to you:
;^)
Posted on 11/20/2003 5:34:42 AM PST by Hillary's Lovely Legs
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Michael Jackson (news) and his attorney will "choose their own time and their own place" to surrender to face child molestation allegations, a family attorney said Thursday. A friend said he was going to "fight this tooth and nail."
Investigators waited for the singer at Santa Barbara's small airport on Wednesday, along with a throng of media, but he did not appear. Jackson had left Las Vegas in his private jet Wednesday, but his whereabouts were unknown, according to published reports.
He was expected to surrender to authorities as soon as Thursday, and law enforcement officials said charges would be filed.
Brian Oxman, who has been an attorney for the Jackson family for years but is not directly representing Michael Jackson in this case, said Thursday that Jackson and attorney Mark Geragos were working on the timing of the surrender. Geragos is also the defense attorney in the Laci Peterson (news - web sites) murder case.
"They will choose their own time and their own place to do this," Oxman said on CBS' "The Early Show." "It will be designed to be as quick as possible from their own perspective."
A family friend, Steve Manning, told ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday that Jackson's family came to Las Vegas to support him. "He feels he's been wrongly accused and he's going to fight this tooth and nail," Manning said. "He's at war right now and he's going to use any weapon he has to fight these charges."
His arrest warrant set bail at $3 million and Jackson was directed to give up his passport, authorities said.
"Get over here and get checked in," District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon Jr. advised the King of Pop at a news conference broadcast worldwide.
The 45-year-old singer was in Las Vegas when dozens of law enforcement agents swarmed his Neverland Ranch compound Tuesday to serve a search warrant.
Jackson left Las Vegas in his private jet on Wednesday, according to reports in Thursday's Los Angeles Times and Santa Barbara News-Press. He was escorted by Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies to his own jet and flew from a private terminal at the McCarran International Airport, according to an airport security guard the Times did not name. The News-Press said Jackson's pilot had not filed a flight plan and neither newspaper reported where the jet was headed.
Jackson is charged by the state with lewd or lascivious acts with a child under age 14, punishable by three to eight years in prison, law enforcement officials said.
"Michael would never harm a child in any way," Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman said in a statement. "These scurrilous and totally unfounded allegations will be proven false in a courtroom."
Similar allegations surfaced against Jackson a decade ago, but they never led to the filing of criminal charges and in 1994 the probe became inactive. Jackson had maintained his innocence but reportedly paid a multimillion-dollar civil settlement, and the child would not testify in any criminal proceeding.
Sneddon said this case was different because he had a cooperative victim and because of a change in state law "specifically because of the 1993-94 Michael Jackson investigation."
Sneddon told the news conference multiple counts would be filed against Jackson "in a very short period of time," and noted that no civil case has been filed and none is expected, unlike 1993.
Sneddon would not say when or where the alleged crimes took place or how old the child was. He said an affidavit outlining the details will be sealed for 45 days.
But Oxman told CBS that the case involves the alleged molestation of a 12-year-old boy at Neverland Ranch, the storybook playground where the singer has been known to hold sleepover parties with children.
In a documentary broadcast on ABC earlier this year, Jackson said he had slept in a bed with many children. "When you say bed you're thinking sexual," he said in the interview. "It's not sexual, we're going to sleep. I tuck them in. ... It's very charming, it's very sweet."
Jackson, in a statement Tuesday, noted that the allegations surfaced the same day a new greatest hits CD, "Number Ones," was released, but the district attorney dismissed any connection.
"Like the sheriff and I are really into that kind of music," Sneddon said.
On Wednesday, CBS pulled a Jackson music special planned for next Wednesday on his greatest hits and the impact on pop culture of the former child star who got his start with his brothers as a member of the singing-and-dancing Jackson 5.
The singer had international hits with the albums "Thriller" (1982), "Bad" (1987) and "Dangerous" (1991), but saw his career begin to collapse after the 1993 allegations.
The sheriff's deputies should've taken him into custody right then and there. Does the law not allow that because they were outside of California?
Shouldn't they be hunting this pussbag down? I'm sure the average pedophile pervert wouldn't get to "choose their own time and place" for anything.
There should be additional negative repercussions for this guy for every hour he holds out...resisting arrest or something.
Oh, that's right, he's a "star". Forget it.
;^)
Forget all these stories that Mark Geragos was hired to represent Michael Jackson just yesterday. Or the day before. Were we all born yesterday? Geragos has been on the case since last March.
That’s right. Jackson has known for most of the year, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it, that trouble was brewing at Neverland. The child who is now the subject of this molestation allegation began to raise questions about their relationship late last winter. Jackson -- who is not completely out of touch with reality -- responded by bringing in an expert defender.
Jackson’s camp, I am told, is more than ready to do battle with his accuser and his family. I am told that the mother of the child involved will be held up to severe scrutiny. In fact, Jackson’s side will likely argue that when he tried to break off his involvement with helping the boy and his family financially, the mother became, and I am quoting a Jackson insider, “a scorned woman.”
“She’s very screwed up,” said one source. “There’s videotape of her acting weird, too. And Michael was very kind to her, even getting an apartment for her boyfriend.”
But the argument will be that when this woman, who is financially so dependent that she claimed to have lived in a barn, was told by Jackson’s people that the party was over, she ran to a lawyer to see what she could get out of it.
Remember, everyone in this country is guaranteed a defense, even if you don’t agree with it.
But as I wrote in this space yesterday, a lot of the evidence in the Jackson case will come down to videotape. There is lots of it, too, some of which may show the boy and his family singing the praises of Jackson, defending and explaining his odd lifestyle. If so, they will be hard-pressed to explain their own behavior now. For example: In one interview last winter, the mother of the boy told a reporter: "Michael has pet names for all of my children, and [one of them] even calls him Daddy. He is the father they never had." She said all her children were “hoping to spend a lot more time with him in the future."
The sudden change in Jackson’s schedule, by the way, throws a monkey wrench into his promotional plans for his new greatest hits album. Michael and his entourage were three days away from leaving for Paris and Berlin, where enthusiastic fans would have greeted him. Here in the U.S., the album has so far not made any of the early top 10 of the week lists at major retailers like Tower, Virgin or HMV.
That sure is a crock of ....
Correct?
If you knew the planes "N" number and had people on the ground that knew were to look for it perhaps. Flowing the flight via listening to a radio that lets you listen to aircraft verbal transmissions may be another in the area where he is supposed to land, again you need to know the "N" number.
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