The trial and subsequent acquittal of Michael Jackson holds important lessons that go well beyond the general entertainment, depravity and titillation of its accompanying media circus.
June 17, 2005 (Press Release) --
The trial and subsequent acquittal of Michael Jackson holds important lessons that go well beyond the general entertainment, depravity and titillation of its accompanying media circus. It represents a disturbing combination of political, legal and journalistic forces at the core of US society – a combination that other countries should do their best to avoid.
If you listened to the media you would have been extremely shocked at the verdict. You would have no doubt also questioned the IQ and/or the integrity of the jurors, as many journalists have since done.
After cases such as OJ Simpson and Robert Blake, you would have also wondered whether or not celebrities have made themselves exceptions to the rule of law.
From an entirely objective, if sadly not a journalistic perspective, Michael Jackson’s guilt or innocence should be irrelevant. What should concern us in any trial is whether or not due process has been observed. I will illustrate.
One of my favorite movies of all time is A Man for All Seasons. It is the historical account of how Sir Thomas Moore (Paul Scholfield), the Lord High Chancellor, refused to grant Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) a legal basis for divorcing his first wife – Katharine of Aragon. As a result of this refusal, Moore lost his head to the executioner on Henry’s orders.
Quite apart from the quality of the plot, the film forever burnished in my mind a principle that I believe everyone should hold sacred – the primary purpose of the law is to protect the society at large, and not to punish the guilty. As Thomas Moore articulated, if the devil was let loose in the land and you chopped down every single law in a desperate attempt to arrest him, what law would you then look to for protection if he suddenly turned and ran at you.
That same principle that must be applied to Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Robert Blake and Osama Bin Laden. If their legal rights are in peril, then we are all in peril. It is better to scrupulously apply the law and have a guilty person go free, than to bend it in order to gain a single prosecution.
With all the above in mind, we can return to the Jackson case.
The following extract is from the article The Michael Jackson case: A DA's Vendetta, was posted on the website www.rawstory.com by Dr. K. C. Arceneaux. It provides us with some interesting information on Tom Sneddon, the prosecuting DA.
There have been other civil cases against Sneddon of which the public is unaware because they settled out of court. Among them is the case of Efren Cruz. In December 2001, the LA Times ran a story titled, “Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder Sues Prosecutors." Cruz served four and a half years in Pelican Bay prison for a shooting he did not commit, and upon his release sued Sneddon and three senior prosecutors for $120 million, for malicious prosecution, negligence, conspiracy to keep him in prison and violating his civil rights. Allegedly, the prosecutors withheld evidence that would have exonerated Cruz.
The evidence was the real killer's secretly taped confession. The lawsuit was settled out of court at taxpayer's expense, for an undisclosed but certainly substantial amount.
Specifically in respect of the Jackson case, the article went on to state:
Following the filing of charges against Jackson on Dec. 18, 2003, Sneddon summarily dismissed the Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Children and Family Services investigations of Jackson. The investigations concluded that complaints of molestation had been unfounded.
"They have a lot of problems down there [in LA] and that office has a lot of problems," he quipped.
What he failed to mention was that the Santa Barbara Children's Services and Santa Barbara law enforcement had conducted similar investigations and had come to similar conclusions.
From a legal perspective, the differences between the two cases are axiomatic. In Cruz’s case important evidence was omitted. The full weight of a corrupt judiciary was then brought to bear on a defenseless average Joe and he could do absolutely nothing about it. In Jackson’s case the judge who allowed evidence of previous complaints against Jackson, inexplicably and outrageously disbarred the more directly relevant findings of the LA and Santa Barbara social and law enforcement agencies. However, Jackson’s millions meant that he could mount more than an adequate challenge to the charges leveled against him.
The idea of celebrity justice is a vacuous illusion created by a corrupt judicial system. When the DA has over 80 lawyers and investigators working on a prosecution, as they did in Jackson’s case, the best any celebrity can hope for is a fair fight.
Unfortunately, the true reality is that money only buys you equality before the law. It certainly does not buy you justice. Moreover, its absence is likely to guarantee injustice.
It explains why so many people in the US are opposed to the death penalty and why the State of Illinois amongst others had reason to suspend it – too many innocent victims were being executed. It explains why minorities, Blacks and Hispanics in particular, are fearful of the judicial system.
In the US, the poorer you are, the less equal you are before the law.
It also raises some very valid questions.
What if it was you the judicial system and the media came after?
Who are the real criminals here?
Why isn’t someone like Sneddon in jail for lying and false imprisonment?
Why did the judge disbar evidence that could have resulted in the case being thrown out from the outset?
If the media is supposedly a guarantor of democracy, why were these issues not raised and the corruption of the judicial system challenged?
Instead we were bombarded with a daily diet of salacious and invidious gossip. We had a trial and conviction by media, some of who are only now beginning to say that they knew the case was a bad one to begin with.
Why are they only saying that now?
Surely the above facts were available to them and they could have reported the appropriate conclusions had they wished to do so.
Why did they not do so?
I will tell you why.
Competition in the media is now fiercer than ever. Advertising and ratings are essential for survival and that means the competition for audiences is also now fiercer than ever. Like war, the first casualty of modern day journalism, if one can call it that, is the truth.
If you are in the business of making money then dull truth is something you simply cannot afford. Over the past twenty years media organizations have been consolidated into large corporate entities with specific profit targets – no news, means no profits.
If you can’t get the news, then you must create the news.
That is why right now, media organizations around the world are counting the cost of the Jackson verdict. A free Jackson going home is simply not as profitable as one handcuffed, sentenced and imprisoned. If Jackson had been found guilty we would already have been bombarded with images of what prison life would hold for him, what he would eat, where he would sleep, and why he would be unable to do the Moonwalk in his tiny cell.
Thankfully, we have been spared all this – that is at least until some other victim appears.
There is one other critical observation that must be made. In the US, a DA is voted into office. In a culture of vindictive imprisonment, success at the ballot box is dependent on how many people you can lock up, and how good you can look when doing so. The politicization of the judiciary extends all the way to the Supreme Court – witness the current Senate battles over judicial appointments made by the Bush Administration.
Thus we should not be surprised at the result – a devilish concoction of unholy politics, an unethical judiciary, and an unscrupulous media.
Jonathan Ledwidge is the author of the book A Mannequin for President – www.amannequinforpresident.com
If you listened to the media you would have been extremely shocked at the verdict. You would have no doubt also questioned the IQ and/or the integrity of the jurors, as many journalists have since done.
After cases such as OJ Simpson and Robert Blake, you would have also wondered whether or not celebrities have made themselves exceptions to the rule of law.
From an entirely objective, if sadly not a journalistic perspective, Michael Jackson’s guilt or innocence should be irrelevant. What should concern us in any trial is whether or not due process has been observed. I will illustrate.
One of my favorite movies of all time is A Man for All Seasons. It is the historical account of how Sir Thomas Moore (Paul Scholfield), the Lord High Chancellor, refused to grant Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) a legal basis for divorcing his first wife – Katharine of Aragon. As a result of this refusal, Moore lost his head to the executioner on Henry’s orders.
Quite apart from the quality of the plot, the film forever burnished in my mind a principle that I believe everyone should hold sacred – the primary purpose of the law is to protect the society at large, and not to punish the guilty. As Thomas Moore articulated, if the devil was let loose in the land and you chopped down every single law in a desperate attempt to arrest him, what law would you then look to for protection if he suddenly turned and ran at you.
That same principle that must be applied to Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Robert Blake and Osama Bin Laden. If their legal rights are in peril, then we are all in peril. It is better to scrupulously apply the law and have a guilty person go free, than to bend it in order to gain a single prosecution.
With all the above in mind, we can return to the Jackson case.
The following extract is from the article The Michael Jackson case: A DA's Vendetta, was posted on the website www.rawstory.com by Dr. K. C. Arceneaux. It provides us with some interesting information on Tom Sneddon, the prosecuting DA.
There have been other civil cases against Sneddon of which the public is unaware because they settled out of court. Among them is the case of Efren Cruz. In December 2001, the LA Times ran a story titled, “Man Wrongly Convicted of Murder Sues Prosecutors." Cruz served four and a half years in Pelican Bay prison for a shooting he did not commit, and upon his release sued Sneddon and three senior prosecutors for $120 million, for malicious prosecution, negligence, conspiracy to keep him in prison and violating his civil rights. Allegedly, the prosecutors withheld evidence that would have exonerated Cruz.
The evidence was the real killer's secretly taped confession. The lawsuit was settled out of court at taxpayer's expense, for an undisclosed but certainly substantial amount.
Specifically in respect of the Jackson case, the article went on to state:
Following the filing of charges against Jackson on Dec. 18, 2003, Sneddon summarily dismissed the Los Angeles Police Department and the Department of Children and Family Services investigations of Jackson. The investigations concluded that complaints of molestation had been unfounded.
"They have a lot of problems down there [in LA] and that office has a lot of problems," he quipped.
What he failed to mention was that the Santa Barbara Children's Services and Santa Barbara law enforcement had conducted similar investigations and had come to similar conclusions.
From a legal perspective, the differences between the two cases are axiomatic. In Cruz’s case important evidence was omitted. The full weight of a corrupt judiciary was then brought to bear on a defenseless average Joe and he could do absolutely nothing about it. In Jackson’s case the judge who allowed evidence of previous complaints against Jackson, inexplicably and outrageously disbarred the more directly relevant findings of the LA and Santa Barbara social and law enforcement agencies. However, Jackson’s millions meant that he could mount more than an adequate challenge to the charges leveled against him.
The idea of celebrity justice is a vacuous illusion created by a corrupt judicial system. When the DA has over 80 lawyers and investigators working on a prosecution, as they did in Jackson’s case, the best any celebrity can hope for is a fair fight.
Unfortunately, the true reality is that money only buys you equality before the law. It certainly does not buy you justice. Moreover, its absence is likely to guarantee injustice.
It explains why so many people in the US are opposed to the death penalty and why the State of Illinois amongst others had reason to suspend it – too many innocent victims were being executed. It explains why minorities, Blacks and Hispanics in particular, are fearful of the judicial system.
In the US, the poorer you are, the less equal you are before the law.
It also raises some very valid questions.
What if it was you the judicial system and the media came after?
Who are the real criminals here?
Why isn’t someone like Sneddon in jail for lying and false imprisonment?
Why did the judge disbar evidence that could have resulted in the case being thrown out from the outset?
If the media is supposedly a guarantor of democracy, why were these issues not raised and the corruption of the judicial system challenged?
Instead we were bombarded with a daily diet of salacious and invidious gossip. We had a trial and conviction by media, some of who are only now beginning to say that they knew the case was a bad one to begin with.
Why are they only saying that now?
Surely the above facts were available to them and they could have reported the appropriate conclusions had they wished to do so.
Why did they not do so?
I will tell you why.
Competition in the media is now fiercer than ever. Advertising and ratings are essential for survival and that means the competition for audiences is also now fiercer than ever. Like war, the first casualty of modern day journalism, if one can call it that, is the truth.
If you are in the business of making money then dull truth is something you simply cannot afford. Over the past twenty years media organizations have been consolidated into large corporate entities with specific profit targets – no news, means no profits.
If you can’t get the news, then you must create the news.
That is why right now, media organizations around the world are counting the cost of the Jackson verdict. A free Jackson going home is simply not as profitable as one handcuffed, sentenced and imprisoned. If Jackson had been found guilty we would already have been bombarded with images of what prison life would hold for him, what he would eat, where he would sleep, and why he would be unable to do the Moonwalk in his tiny cell.
Thankfully, we have been spared all this – that is at least until some other victim appears.
There is one other critical observation that must be made. In the US, a DA is voted into office. In a culture of vindictive imprisonment, success at the ballot box is dependent on how many people you can lock up, and how good you can look when doing so. The politicization of the judiciary extends all the way to the Supreme Court – witness the current Senate battles over judicial appointments made by the Bush Administration.
Thus we should not be surprised at the result – a devilish concoction of unholy politics, an unethical judiciary, and an unscrupulous media.
Jonathan Ledwidge is the author of the book A Mannequin for President – www.amannequinforpresident.com
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