Michael Jackson found NOT guilty

[alibabba]

A Jury just returned a verdict of NOT guilty in the Michael Jackson affair.

 

Do we think that justice was served? If not, why not?

[Pangloss]

I'm surprised, given the make-up of the jury.

 

And a little less embarassed about living in Florida now.

[Bettina]

He is as guilty as sin.....I just can't prove it.

 

Bettina

[Dak]

^^ you dont know that he is guilty he could just be mentally odd in other ways (entirely plausable).

 

Do we think that justice was served?

considering the calibre of the lawyers involved, i doubt that the prosess followed was fair and correct. if justice was served, then it was a coincidence. but... maybe im a tad over-cynicle about lawyers.

[Mokele]

ou dont know that he is guilty he could just be mentally odd in other ways (entirely plausable).

 

Agreed. I, for one, am more than a bit disquieted by how readily people assume he is automatically guilty just because he is weird. Yes, some of his behaviors set off alarm bells, but these behaviors are *correlates*, not perfect indicators.

 

If Bob regularly uses PCP, and suddenly someone he knows is murdered, does that mean Bob definitely did it? No. Bod certainly *may* have done it, and he should be at the top of the list of suspects, but without any further evidence you cannot and should not convict him.

 

Being rather weird in both personality and appearance myself, I'm more than a little uneasy about how quickly people jump to conclusions based on superficial evidence and mere correlates.

 

Mokele

[AzurePhoenix]

Either he did it, and is a perverto sicko freako, or he didn't do it and is a whole new brand of wierdo creepo freako. I know it's hard to tell, but there's a difference.

 

This wouldn't haave happened if the government would just commit to using robots on juries.

 

I, for one, am more than a bit disquieted by how readily people assume he is automatically guilty just because he is weird.

I'm more worried about how many people were convinced of his innocence simply because of who he is (or at least who he was, four or five noses ago).

[swansont]

I sense a trend.

 

Black man with a glove = not guilty

[AzurePhoenix]

Black? Pal, he's been achromatic for years. He hasn't been black since before my time

[Pangloss]

One thing I thought was interesting about this case is how it hung on the believability of the witnesses. Jurors commented on it after the trial, saying in effect that they didn't find them credible (one juror even expressing how she couldn't understand how the mother would let her kid sleep with Jackson).

 

Given the make-up of the jury, which certainly seemed to be the type that would convict a child molestor faster than you can say "What time is Bill O'Reilly on?", it seems to me that the "why are these pathetic weasels wasting six months of my life" element outweighed the "lock the freak up and throw away the key" element.

 

(In fact, from the jury's point of view, it was a complete waste of time in every way. They didn't convict, so they can't really make much money off it, and they didn't even get the satisfaction of being able to say that their investment of time resulted in safer streets for our kids. In a way you gotta hand it to them -- they certainly didn't take the easy route.)

 

Anyway, there's "pro" and "con" here, but I can't help but wonder if this is evidence that much of our judicial system still hinges on subjective opinion. The moral of the story seems to be (whatever you think of these people) that if you don't look and act respectable, you don't get justice.

 

Somebody call Bill Cosby, I think he's got a new angle here....

[Dak]

Agreed. I, for one, am more than a bit disquieted by how readily people assume he is automatically guilty just because he is weird. Yes, some of his behaviors set off alarm bells, but these behaviors are *correlates*, not perfect indicators.

quite. even the fact that he shared bed with childeren, whilst perhaps indicitive of mental problems (when taken alongside his other behaviours), is not in-and-of itself a crime. As long as nothing innapropriate was done whilst in bed with the childeren.

 

Personally, in my non-psycologists oppinion, he seems to have the mentality of a pre-pubesent child: so i can easaly see how he could share a bed with a child, and for it to be an entirely innocent thing.

 

more directly related to the OP: pangalos mentioned the inportance of the eye witnesses. eye-witnesses are quite tricky to build a case around, due to the fact that its 'there word against his', and there can be alot of mistakes, from minor details to inportant ones. i think that in a case which relies heavaly on eye-witnesses, theres a tendancy to err towards 'not-guilty', just to be on the safe side (although this is based mainly on what iv learnt about the english & welsh jusrispurudence, and the same may not nessesarily be true in america).

 

so it seems as if 'not guilty' may have been the more likely outcome from the start.

[coquina]

I think there was a problem with the credibility of the accusers. Did the jury get to hear the evidence about the previous times the mother had sued for molestation?

[blike]

Black man with a glove = not guilty

ROFL

[Skye]

Can't say I'm surprised, I said to my girlfriend, even before the trial was announced, that the accusers were dodgy as a rubber spade, so it'd be hard to convict. I think justice was served, at least the procedural system of justice. Don't bring a good case, don't get the conviction.

[AzurePhoenix]

If only that chimpanzee had been allowed to testify.... I bet he's seen some things, and likely have been made to spill his guts for something as simple as a banana.

[Ophiolite]

An individual with a child like mind may be expected to behave in a child like way. I believe that's what we have here. The jury apparently reached the same conclusion. They based that conclusion upon careful consideration of a pile of evidence that we have been exposed to only selectively, largely via sensationalist media.

I think justice was probably served.

[lepidoptera]

I don't think he is guilty. I have looked into the facts, like that the family has filed many lawsuits, and frankly, as creepy as Michael is, I just can't imagine him doing this. He is so childish. Can you imagine a sane, healthy five year old boy commiting such a crime? No. Michael is not a sane thirty or fourty something man. He is a five year old. A five year old with access to drugs and magazines, but nonetheless, a five year old.

[atinymonkey]

Mmmm. He's been tried and found innocent in a court of law. It's unjustifiably cruel to continue the trial outside of the courtroom. He is not guilty.

[lepidoptera]

We are not continuing the trial, oh fair one. We are simply Scientifically debating (as this site is named) the fairness of the outcome of the trial that has already taken place. atinymonkey, i wonder why it is that whatever i type, in whatever topic i type it in, you always dispute my opinion. Do you find it fun to do so?

[atinymonkey]

I didn't think I was particularly disagreeing with your opinion, I support the ascertain that he is innocent. I was making a general comment about judging someone who has been found innocent in trial by jury being morally dubious. I wasn't aiming it at you.

 

N.B. this particular debate is not of a scientific nature.

[alibabba]

One thing I thought was interesting about this case is how it hung on the believability of the witnesses. Jurors commented on it after the trial' date=' saying in effect that they didn't find them credible (one juror even expressing how she couldn't understand how the mother would let her kid sleep with Jackson).

 

[/quote']

 

That was my take on it too. Throughout the trial, the witnesses seemed to have been telling two stories, and their families were obviously exposing their own kids to this guy to get a whack at a multi-million dollar settlement.

 

Fair or not, a kid from that kind of family background has a problem with credibility--in my opinion.

 

As an observer, I can think MJ was guilty and no harm is done, but a juror is obligated to consider the defendant innocent until the prosecution proves otherwise--and that beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

If I had been on that jury, I probably would have had to vote not guilty too, which would have been a tough pill to swallow.

[Pangloss]

Yeah no kidding. You waste almost five months of your life going to court 40 hours a week (when most of us dread even a brief appearance for a traffic ticket), and in the end it's all for naught, and you have to (in essence) tell the district attorney that he wasted $2 million of your money too.

 

If I were one of those juror's I'd be pretty pissed. So much so, in fact, I might even be inclined to write a book to that effect. (grin)

[Cathy Pa]

He is as guilty as sin.....I just can't prove it.

 

Bettina

 

He sure is' date=' but the parents of those kids are just as guilty as he is.

 

What kind of Mother would allow her child to spend the night with Michael Jackson after what has come out about [b']him[/b] in the last 10 years?

[Ophiolite]

Bettina, Cathy Pa. You did not sit on the jury. You did not hear the evidence, you did not hear the rebuttals, you did not hear the redirects. You did not see the witnessess. You did not have an opportunity to assess their demeanour. You did not take detailed notes during the trial. You did not spend eight days reviewing the evidence and the credibility of the witnessess and the quality of the evidence with a group of other individuals who had gone through the same experience.

What you have done is taken a justifiable disgust for child abuse, combined it with a questionable dislike for bizarre character traits, and unreasonably joined a witch hunt.

Bettina, you have spoken eloquently on other threads of the curse of your empathic abilities. I'm just wondering where is your empathy for an innocent (in both senses of the word) forty four year old boy, who is found guilty by rumour, gossip and presumption within one of the courts of public opinion.

[alibabba]

I think that many people will consider him guilty regardless of the jury's decision.

 

The OJ thing taught us that a jury can be biased against the evidence.

 

Personally, I think he is guilty, but givin the evidence presented in court, I am pleased that he was found NOT guilty.

 

If that makes any sense to anyone....

[swansont]

Keep in mind that a "not guilty" verdict doesn't mean he didn't do it. It can mean the prosecution didn't make their case. But once he's found not guilty, I think there are some legal issues with going around saying that he is (but IANAL). I think you have to go with "he got away with it."

 

edit to add: estoppel

The government, I believe, can't go around saying he's guilty, because of collateral estoppel.