Category: Let's talk
yesterday the jury selection began for the Michael Jackson trial. It is aledged, that Michael jackson sexually abused some young child and also that he was planning to abduct this child and his family. The selection of jurers will be made from some 750 individuals. But, given who is on trial here, and the amount of press Michael Jackson has received in the past, for former such claims, andalso about his lifestyle ... etc, how can he possibly ever get a fair trial?
Well I think given the propensity for the American's to go OTT with just about everything, Jackson is unlikely to be granted a fair trial.They will inevitably pretend to act in accordance with the law,but for how long and with how much sincerity..personally I hope the throw the book at the creep...
now now goblin, innocent until proven guilty ... personally I think Michael jackson is weird, but I don't think he's a pedifile. just my personal opinion smile
smile.
that's the whole point in this case we just don't know the whole truth..no doubt during the trial there will be various versions touted about,but MJ did pay off the boy ill with cancer when he threatened to prosecute, why do that when you have nothing to hide.
Well, I think he did that to find an easy way out. I think he figured it'd be easier to silence the case than to have the whole trial/public thing where his name be dragged through the mud even more.
I think whichever way you look at it it's a bit sad. On one hand his fame and power can guarantee him best legal defense possible so he might get away with having done something like that. On the flipside, his fame etc may just make him a target for a lot of people who want to use their kids to gain money from him. I think lying about an accusation as serious as rape or sexual abuse is almost as bad as committing it. To me it's the most horrible crime you can commit really and I think it's very serious accusation and should be punished harshly. By the same token those are often difficult to prove and sadly people have been known to use these accusations in the past only to settle for money.
In some cases the line is very blurred: For instance (to get a bit off topic) my friend dated a girl who called him and told him she had slept with someone else. The day after she claimed he had raped her. As far as he figured what happened was that she had undressed both of them and started some stuff but then she had wanted to pull back from it but he had, well, not stopped. This is a crime and against her will but I don't feel this is as severe as actually attacking someone since I can't hel but feel she was responsible for creating a situation where he really thought and expected something like this to happen. Therefore I think this needs to be dealt with differently, the guy is of course still wrong but the girl can't be hold completely blameless. But this can be stretched both ways.
So, see, what I mean, it's so hard to conclusively prove anything one way or the other with these cases and when you have a pop star it's even harder. I would like to think he's smart enough not to have done something like this. I mean, were he that perverted wouldn't he have gone somewhere, to Africa or poor countries in Asia where this trade is commonplace and had his way with kids there? Not saying it's justifiable *shudders* and it's discusting but if he really felt the need I think he would've been smart enough to do that. I sadly know of Icelandic guys who went to Thailand (for women fortunately not kids) and said they had been offered all sorts of stuff like this, eastern Europe is also thriving with this trade.
It's horrible and in a way I think if the "victims" win a settlement 90% of that settlement should go into battling this organized slavery of children around the world, rather than to buy the victims' families new sports cars and private jets because, trust me, that's the first thing they'd do with the money.
Cheers
-B
I must say, I am surprised that lawlord hasnt' commented on this topic yet, smile. Goblin, I respect your oppinion, but disagree with what you are saying. If what you believe to be true, is indeed true, O J Simpson would surely be in jail by now? The plain reality is that he is not. And why not? Because the case was thrown out of court after a five year investigation, due to the fact that there was too much press coverage hence, the trial being unfair due to the fact that the jurers were unable to have a bias oppinion. I would like to hazzard a guess of one of two things. I personally think, that either the case will be thrown out of court, or Jackson will get a fine if proven guilty due to the fact that there will be public uproar from his fans if anything other happens. However, we shall soon see, won't we, smile.
hey, sugar, i have to agree with you there, personally, i feel very confused about the whole michael jackson thing. i used to like him when i was younger, but now all this stuff has come out, i'm not entirely sure. what i don't agree with is his fans calling him jesus and saying he has the same powers. that is what i don't agree with.
I think that any girl who aledges rape when it didn't happen is way out of line. however, if a girl comes on to a guy and then changes her mind and he doesn't stop, he still acted outside the boundaries. yeah you're right, maybe it does need to be treated differently, but no should mean no, and any guy who doesn't respect that is way outa line.
The reason I didn't comment was that I have only just seen the topic. Now, at the beginning of the trial, were it held in britain, the jurors would be told to wipe everything from their minds and forget everything about Michael Jackson, the celebrity. Now, I think most jurors are intelligent enough to do this. The problem, though, is this whole jury selection nonsense. In the UK, jurors are chosen at random, completely at random. In america, by contrast, it degenerates into a silly bargaining exercise with each side trying to get the tribunal that most favours their version of the case. So you get jury consultants checking up on jurors, finding out about them, and so on. meanwhile, the lawyers conduct a litigious battle over each juror which one would associate normally only with the most cut-throat of proceedings in the commercial court, but certainly not as part of the criminal justice process. Eventually, they will come up with twelve jurors and those jurors will be told to forget everything: the questionnaires; the posturing by the lawyers; the speeches that the lawyers deliver to them during jury selection; everything. However, what this selection exercise means is that jurors may well have already developed preconceptions based on what the lawyers say prior to the commencement of the trial and importantly, those lawyers will know that and will continue to remind those jurors of those preconceptions, precisely because of the veritable dossier they will have on each juror. so the tribunal of fact, in other words, will be tools in teh hands of the advocates. So in summary, it is not the fact that Michael Jackson is a public figure that worries me as to his trial being unfair. Public figure he may be, but it is a fundamental tenet of common law jurisdictions such as Britain and the US, as opposed to Romanist jurisdictions such as France, Italy and Germany, that a citizen has a right to trial by jury for serious offences. No, it is not this aspect that worries me because jurors are intelligent enough to forget media coverage, just as the jury in every notorious case have to do. What worries me is what I perceive to be the fundamental flaw in the American justice system in having jury selection in the laborious way they have it. Jury selection should be completely random, 12 from a pannel of 20 just as we have it here and as they have it in the rest of the commonwealth. it is, I regret to say, yet another morally dubious feature of a justice system which, I believe, is in places a very damning indictment on US justice. And by the way, Goblin you can't call Michael Jackson a child abuser or a creep or anything like that yet; he is not guilty of anything at the moment.
As we are living in a democracy therefore I have that right and the freedom to exercise it.
Well, if you are ever unfortunate enough to be accused of a crime and if, moreover, the accusation is outrageous, just ponder very carefully what you have just said if people start placing the noose around your neck before you've even got to court.
I have been wrongly accused of a very serious crime and for a while the noose was closer than I would have liked.
Well then you ought to know better than to start throwing the book at someone until they have been duly convicted of the offence or offences with which they are charged.
one thing that I thought about is the people who might serve on this jury just to be able to write and sell a book later on. Amber Fry, in the Scott Peterson trial, had her book on the shelf the day he was found guilty. You can't tell me she wasn't writing that book all along. Not to mention the T.V. appearences that she and others in high profile trials will make. I'm just afraid that people will be looking for thier own shot at the brass ring instead of finding out the truth.
Carla
exactly, and at the risk of sounding like I am on an anti-American crusade, which I most certainly am not, it is yet another flaw of the american justice system that such jurors are not sent to prison for contempt of court. It's a shame, because the system of crime detection through the police agencies in the US is very good and often let down by the peculiarities of the judicial system.