Article f/MercuryNews
The judge in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial said Friday he may sanction lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. for misrepresenting the terms under which Jackson waived his privilege of confidentiality with former lawyer Mark Geragos.
"I feel deceived by Mr. Mesereau and I am considering ... sanctions of some sort against Mr. Mesereau," Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville said in a hearing before Geragos resumed testifying.
Jackson only waived attorney-client privilege for the period up until his arrest in November 2003 but that limit was not disclosed until Geragos mentioned it while testifying last week.
The prosecution and the judge were surprised by the limitation, and at the time Mesereau apologized, saying he had not thought the period after arrest was relevant.
Defense attorney Robert Sanger argued Friday that he had given a copy of the waiver to the district attorney and the judge's clerk, but it apparently hadn't been read.
The judge said that was not relevant because he considered Mesereau to have misrepresented the waiver in his statements in open court.
Prosecutors argued that Geragos should be required to testify about the period after the arrest because of the misrepresentation, but the judge ruled that Geragos would only have to testify about the period allowed by the waiver.
The judge said he could have stricken Geragos' testimony from the record but didn't think that was viable because jurors had already heard it and were likely to remember it during deliberations.
Jackson, 46, is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy in February or March 2003, plying him with wine and conspiring to hold the boy's family captive. Prosecutors said he wanted them to rebut a TV documentary in which Jackson said he let children sleep in his bed, but it was non-sexual.
Geragos began testifying on May 13 but was granted a one-week delay before returning because of his obligations to other cases.
When testimony resumed, Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen asked Geragos about the specifics of surveillance conducted on the accuser's family by a private investigator, Bradley Miller, who worked for Geragos.
Zonen asked whether Geragos ordered Miller to monitor the home of the mother's parents.
Geragos said he gave Miller general orders to keep tabs on the family but didn't tell him specifically what to do.
"I told him, 'Find out who they're meeting with and what they're doing,'" Geragos said.
He said he was concerned the family might go to tabloids to sell a story or to an attorney to try to sue Jackson.
"My concern was that there was going to be some kind of accusation made, there was going to be some false story concocted," Geragos said.
Prosecutors have shown surveillance videotapes to suggest that Jackson and his associates were plotting to hold the family captive, and the mother has testified she feared her parents and her boyfriend would be in danger if she didn't cooperate with Jackson.
Zonen tried to link Miller to the alleged captivity conspiracy by asking Geragos if he knew that an employee of Miller threw rocks at the home of the accuser's grandparents, an incident that the accuser's grandmother and sister alleged in their testimony.
"I don't send people out to throw stones at people's houses," Geragos said.
Zonen also asked about a note left at the house in which the boy and his brother were asked to contact Vince Amen or Frank Tyson, who are in a group of Jackson associates and employees who prosecutors have named as unindicted co-conspirators.
Geragos said he had never seen the note before.
The testimony was marked by snippy exchanges between Zonen and Geragos, and the judge at one point chided the prosecutor for approaching the witness stand too often without permission.
Zonen also asked if employees of Geragos stood guard outside the family's room at a resort called the Country Suites in Calabasas - one of the places where the family claims to have been held.
"I don't believe that any employees of mine were standing guard outside the Country Suites," Geragos said. "I don't buy that for a second."
On Thursday, Jackson's legal team scored a victory as jurors were allowed to see a video tour of his Neverland ranch that District Attorney Tom Sneddon called "propaganda." Amid idyllic scenes of the estate was a chalkboard with a note by one of Jackson's children that said "I love you daddy."
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