|
重复的就不管了`````````full article here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/209994p-180971c.html
Meanwhile, Diaz will be happy to know that her boyfriend, Justin Timberlake, was keeping himself occupied Tuesday night in Manhattan when he hit the party thrown by Joey Fatone and Joel Rousseau at Suede. Backed by DJ Clue, Timberlake sang Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" while moonwalking on a banquette.
A spy says he also spent a lot of time dancing with one fetching blond - "and they left together."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jackson lawyers: DA abused his power
Defense wants indictment tossed, says Sneddon "bullied" witnesses
7/8/04
By SCOTT HADLY
NEWS-PRESS SENIOR WRITER
In an effort to get the indictment against Michael Jackson thrown out, his defense attorneys went on the attack against Santa Barbara District Attorney Thomas Sneddon, accusing him of misusing his power.
"There is no case in the history of the State of California that has condoned anything like the abuse of power demonstrated in this grand jury proceeding," states a defense motion released Wednesday.
The heavily edited 127-page motion says prosecutors presented inadmissible evidence, hearsay testimony and "bullied and argued with witnesses" during the almost monthlong secret grand jury hearing that ended in a criminal indictment against Mr. Jackson.
A gag order in the case prevents both sides from discussing the motion.
The court papers offer the most detailed glimpse to date of the defense strategy in these early stages of the case.
Along with attacking Mr. Sneddon, the motion reveals that prosecutors called two witnesses from the 1993 investigation of molestation allegations against Mr. Jackson, and they testified about the $15 million civil settlement in that case. The defense attorneys say those witnesses presented inadmissible evidence and their testimony -- on the first day of the grand jury proceeding -- "poisoned the well" for how the grand jurors looked at the evidence.
Although a hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday, the substance of the defense's motion and the prosecutors' response will likely be hashed out in a multiday court hearing in early August.
Mr. Jackson is accused of lewd conduct, administering alcohol to commit molestation and conspiracy to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He pleaded not guilty to all charges April 30.
The grand jury proceeding generated about 1,900 pages of transcripts, and in its motion the defense team -- which includes lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau, with co-counsels Robert Sanger, Steve Cochran and Susan Yu -- excerpts a short portion that they say shows Mr. Sneddon's aggressive tactics.
The heated exchange occurred between Mr. Sneddon and a witness, who is not identified but appears to be H. Russ Halpern, the attorney for the father of the alleged victim. It speaks to one of the core arguments the defense will make: that prosecutors disregarded their obligation to present the evidence fairly. Mr. Halpern has made public statements that attack the credibility of the victim's mother, and he could be used as a witness for the defense.
In the back-and-forth, Mr. Sneddon asks the man believed to be Mr. Halpern why he never brought exculpatory evidence to the attention of the Santa Barbara District Attorney's Office.
"Did you, at the time that you heard that these serious charges had been leveled against a worldwide known entertainer, ever come to the DA's office and say . . . 'You might want to know this.' Did you ever do that before you went on national TV?" Mr. Sneddon asks.
"No," the man says. "I found the DA's office to be hostile when I called. I found the head DA, that being yourself, to be very uncooperative."
The man presumed to be Mr. Halpern goes on to say that he attempted to determine if the victim in the case was indeed his client's son, and whether the boy was dying of cancer, as had been reported. (Because of a bitter custody fight between the parents, the boy's father had not had contact with his son.)
In the transcripts, Mr. Sneddon directly challenges the credibility of the man's account.
"That's a total -- that is not the way that conversation went and you know it," he says.
The man responds, "You know it, too."
Then Mr. Sneddon fires back, saying, "I explained to you why at the time we couldn't tell who the victim was. Because nobody knew the family at the time, did I not?"
"No, you didn't," the man says.
In another section of the motion, the defense argues that prosecutors allowed witnesses themselves to prejudice the grand jury.
In one example, an unnamed witness called Mr. Jackson "the devil."
After prosecutors detail accusations against the woman, which included that she was "making this all up" and was motivated by money, she responded by saying she didn't want to take "the devil's money."
"The prosecutor made no effort to stop or limit the harmful impact of this inadmissible testimony," the defense argued.
Asked to comment on the exchange, Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor, said that while it was somewhat unusual, it didn't necessarily cross any lines of behavior.
"Ordinarily the motivations of the prosecutor are irrelevant," said Mr. Uelmen, who worked on the defense team for O.J. Simpson.
What is relevant is whether prosecutors submitted enough evidence to the grand jury to substantiate charges. The judge will have to look at the evidence and testimony to see if they met that threshold. Mr. Jackson's defense team says the prosecutors did not substantiate the charge and that they introduced inadmissible evidence and testimony.
In a footnote in their motion, the defense attorneys say Mr. Sneddon's behavior is inexplicable and imply that his decision might have to do with his failure to get an indictment in 1993 against Mr. Jackson.
"Any experienced prosecutor, were he thinking clearly, would have known that his behavior was inappropriate," the footnote reads. "This court will never know what caused this behavior . . . the fact is that there is no case of which the undersigned is aware in which a prosecutor has been allowed to conduct himself in anything approaching this fashion before a grand jury."
Before the gag order was imposed, Mr. Sneddon told the News-Press that he didn't dwell on the 1993 case and that it had no influence on his decision to pursue the current case.
In the decade-old investigation, Mr. Sneddon spent more than a year building a case against Mr. Jackson, based on allegations of sexual misconduct made by three boys in 1993. But the case fell apart before any charges were filed after the 13-year-old alleged victim accepted the financial settlement and then declined to testify against the entertainer.
Mr. Sneddon said he never looked back, but he also never hid the fact that he felt the allegations were credible. He objected to the characterization of Mr. Jackson as having been "cleared" of the charges, saying in 1995, "The state of the investigation is in suspension until somebody comes forward."
EXCERPT
A motion filed by Michael Jackson's attorneys attacks District Attorney Thomas Sneddon, above. A footnote to the motion reads: "Any experienced prosecutor, were he thinking clearly, would have known that his behavior was inappropriate.This court will never know what caused this behavior . . . the fact is that there is no case of which the undersigned is aware in which a prosecutor has been allowed to conduct himself in anything approaching this fashion before a grand jury."
http://news.newspress.com/topsports/070804jackson.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jackson Defense Alleges Misconduct by Prosecutors
By Steve Chawkins
Times Staff Writer
July 8, 2004
Santa Barbara County prosecutors bullied some grand jury witnesses and argued with others while allowing one to refer to Michael Jackson as "the devil," the pop star's attorneys contended in court papers released Wednesday.
Only 47 pages of a 126-page motion to dismiss Jackson's indictment because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct were released by Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville. Over protests by media groups, most of the document has been sealed, along with the response to it by the district attorney's office.
Even so, the portion made public offers a rare glimpse of the defense in a case in which dozens of search warrants, the grand jury's 1,800-page transcript and details of the accusations against Jackson have remained secret.
"It sounds as if the case will be acrimonious and personal and not pretty," said Robert F. Landheer, a criminal defense attorney in Santa Barbara.
Jackson was indicted in April for allegedly molesting a 12-year-old boy and allegedly taking part in a conspiracy involving child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He has pleaded not guilty.
Led by Los Angeles attorney Thomas A. Mesereau, the defense team took on Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon personally in its motion, which is to be argued in a hearing Friday. The defense cast him as arrogant and unprincipled, eager to convict Jackson at any cost. In the document, the defense questioned why Sneddon allegedly picked on certain witnesses.
"The court will never know what caused this behavior," the motion states in a footnote. "The fact that this is a career opportunity to indict a famous celebrity, the fact that Mr. Sneddon had been boastful in the media months earlier, the fact that Mr. Sneddon has been embarrassed by criticism in the media … the fact that some of the [grand jury] witnesses had also gone on television to criticize the investigation."
Such attacks are rare in legal filings and can backfire, experts said.
"This appears written not solely for the edification of the judge but for a broader audience," said Michael McMahon, a former longtime Santa Barbara public defender who now works in Ventura County. "If you beat a judge over the head with inferences, he can become protective of the attorney under attack. To speculate about an attorney's motivations is open to question."
Although some of the rhetoric is unusual, the motion is not. Known as a "995 motion" after a section of the state's penal code, it is a standard response to grand jury indictments and seldom succeeds in getting them dismissed, said Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor.
In the Jackson 995 motion, about 80 pages that deal directly with the molestation charges and their investigation remain sealed. In a table of contents provided by defense attorneys, such topics are included in a section labeled "The So-Called Facts Presented to the Grand Jury."
In the portion of the document that was unsealed, defense attorneys lambasted Sneddon and his deputy prosecutors for an "abuse of power" that they said was unprecedented in state judicial history.
They contended that the conspiracy charge against Jackson and others, who have not been publicly identified, was fabricated and that testimony about it before grand jurors was based on innuendo. They also alleged that prosecutors swamped grand jurors with irrelevant and inflammatory evidence "that poisoned the entire proceeding."
In particular, they pointed to two witnesses who testified on the first day of the grand jury's meeting about a 1993 lawsuit against Jackson by a boy he allegedly molested. The defense attorneys maintained the 11-year-old lawsuit, which was subsequently settled, was off-limits for the grand jury and was raised by prosecutors to unfairly tarnish Jackson.
The motion also took prosecutors to task for allegedly running roughshod over standard legal practice and asking questions that never would be allowed in court.
The motion included dozens of purportedly argumentative exchanges, such as when a prosecutor at one point said, "OK. Now you didn't answer my question. So I'm going to ask it again. We'll just stay here till you answer it, OK. It's a simple question. I'm going to get an answer."
Although grand juries are supposed to be impartial investigative bodies, legal experts have long observed that they are usually led to their conclusions by aggressive district attorneys.
Even so, "It's quite rare that an indictment could be dismissed for the misconduct of prosecutors or the way questions are presented," said Uelmen, one of the "Dream Team" attorneys in the O.J. Simpson case.
Although prosecutors in the Jackson case allegedly intimidated some witnesses, they allowed others to disparage him "with impassioned and prejudicial remarks," according to the defense motion.
A woman whose name was blotted out of the motion was told by a prosecutor that "perhaps the biggest and most vicious accusation is that you made all this up."
In response, according to the motion, "she stated that she didn't want to take 'the devil's money.'
"The prosecutor asked if she was 'clear about that.' She stated that Mr. Jackson is 'the devil.' "
|
[复制链接]
发表于 2004-7-2 00:00:00
变色卡
显身卡
狗仔卡
发表于 2004-7-2 00:00:00
楼主