Mother on stand at Jackson trial
Dan Glaister in Santa Maria
Thursday April 14, 2005
The Guardian
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"He spoke to all three of my kids," she told the jury. "He spoke in a very normal way, in a male voice, telling us that we were in danger, that he was a father figure, that he knew what to do in this situation because he had read hundreds of books on psychology."
........Dressed soberly in a pink trouser suit and unrecognisable as the person seen by the jury in a video shown on Tuesday, the mother took the stand midway through the morning to declare: "My name is Janet Jackson."
......Asked by the prosecution attorney Ronald Zonen whom she understood the "killers" to be, the former Ms Arvizo replied, "Him [pointing at Mr Jackson], all of them ... they were the ones who ended up being the killers."
Her testimony was marked by a tendency to ramble and to direct personal comments at Mr Jackson. While prosecutors struggled to restrict her testimony to the points under examination, the defence was happy to let her talk.
But her emotional contribution seemed to alienate some members of the jury. One elderly female juror, who has taken notes throughout the six-week trial, put aside her notebook and sat with her arms folded across her chest as the witness cried.
Ms Arvizo, a key witness for the prosecution, almost did not testify. The trial was thrown into confusion in the morning when she told the judge she would not answer questions about her financial probity.
She took the fifth amendment under which witnesses do not have to answer questions that might incriminate them. The judge, Rodney Melville, assented, ruling that she could testify on some matters but not others. Some observers believe that the decision may make any conviction of the singer extremely vulnerable on appeal.
The defence alleges that Ms Arvizo was engaged in fraudulently obtaining welfare payments.
opcorn and watch how those prosecution pundits try to explain that! Melvile is so biased if it had been a fair judge this "case" would've been closed :nonono: