SANTA MARIA, California, Jan 28 (AFP) - Michael Jackson's teenage sex abuse accuser must face the superstar in open court, a judge ruled Friday, just three days ahead of the start of the pop icon's explosive trial.
Judge Rodney Melville made the critical decision in a final pre-trial hearing ahead of Monday's official launch of the trial of one of the most famous people ever to face justice on such serious criminal charges.
He dismissed prosecutors' calls for the 15-year-old accuser and his 14-year-old brother to testify behind closed doors after Jackson's lawyer said the boys were not "innocent little lambs."
In a flurry of orders that laid the ground rules for what evidence the jury will and won't be allowed to see and hear during the trial, Melville also dealt Jackson's defence two significant blows.
He ruled that jurors can see a collection of erotica seized at Jackson's Neverland Ranch, as well as a copy of the explosive television documentary that set in motion the events that led to his arrest.
But while granting Jackson's request to be allowed to face off his accuser and his brother in public, Melville warned he would not tolerate any intimidation of the children.
"Whether I keep an open courtroom will depend on what happens during their testimony," he said, warning he would entertain no "hand gestures, mutterings" or any other expressions towards the children from the gallery.
The boy has alleged that Jackson, 46, sexually molested him on several occasions in February and March of 2003 at Neverland, near the California town of Santa Maria where the legal proceedings are taking place.
Prosecutors claim the boy's brother witnessed two of the incidents and want both boys to testify.
But Jackson attorney Thomas Mesereau convinced the judge to ignore prosecutors' demands that the boys testify via an audio link from another room in the courthouse.
Prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss argued that the boys would be stigmatised and shamed by public testimony, adding that they had already changed schools and their names and had been forced to "hide out" since their intimate allegations first made world headlines in November 2003.
"To anyone who thinks we should put these young boys in the path of this train, I ask how would you feel if it was your child?" he said.
But Mesereau disputed the portrayal of the boys as vulnerable victims in need of the court's protection, suggesting that the motive for the claims against Jackson was financial.
"They are in their mid-teens and are not tiny little children. They are not the little lambs the prosecutor says they are," Mesereau said rebuffing Auchincloss's argument.
"At least let Michael Jackson, who is on trial in a public proceeding, confront his accusers in a public proceeding," Mesereau said, adding that the star has faced intense scrutiny since his November 20, 2003 arrest.
Jackson has denied 10 charges, including child molestation, plying the boy with alcohol to seduce him and conspiring to kidnap and falsely imprison the boy and his family at Neverland. He is free on three million dollars' bail.
But prosecutors were buoyed by Melville's decision to allow jurors to see the British version of documentary "Living With Michael Jackson," in which the star is seen holding hands with his then 13-year-old accuser and in which he admitted to sharing his bedroom with children.
Jackson's current legal woes began when the programme was aired in the United States on February 6, 2003, causing a media firestorm.
Chief prosecutor Tom Sneddon alleged that the controversy spurred Jackson and five unnamed conspirators to kidnap the boy and his family and hold them prisoner at Neverland until they made a video exonerating him of wrongdoing.
"This was a catastrophe. They were desperate and they needed to do something about it," Sneddon said of the documentary.
The dramatic decline of Jackson's once stellar career and financial fortune made it imperative for him to move to limit the damage caused by Martin Bashir's documentary, prosecutors claimed.
But Mesereau, countered that the film was a sensationalised distortion edited in "Hollywood" fashion.
"They couldn't have come up with something more inflammatory if in their dreams they were permitted to do so," he said. "The documentary is a highly edited, dramatised, provocative piece of material."
Melville also gave prosecutors permission to display to the trial jury a collection of racy magazines, books, videos and photographs seized in a massive police on Neverland.
Prosecutors successfully argued that items were important as they allegedly show Jackson's sexual interest in children or that they could have been used to help him seduce the boy.
But the judge banned the use of the terms "pornography, obscene or erotica" in front of the jury, ordering prosecutors to refer to "books, magazines, adult material or sexually explicit" items.
01/28/2005 22:45 GMT - AFP