Defense, And Jackson, May Rest

With his defense about to rest, Michael Jackson won't take the stand in his child molestation trial, leaving jurors with only the singer's videotaped statements about what happened behind Neverland's closed doors.

The pop star's chief attorney Thomas Mesereau, Jr., announced in court that Comedian Chris Tucker would be the final defense witness, reports CBS News Correspondent Steve Futterman.

Tucker was to resume his testimony Wednesday. After he finishes, the defense was expected to formally rest its case, and prosecutors will begin a rebuttal that is expected to last at least a day.

Jackson's attorneys will then be given an opportunity to respond, followed by closing arguments, which probably won't begin before next week.

As he left court Tuesday, Jackson declined to discuss the decision not to testify. Instead, he smiled, pressed his palms together and said he couldn't comment.

Because taking the stand would have exposed him to cross-examination by prosecutors, the odds of Jackson's testifying were considered remote from the outset.

But speculation that he might take the witness stand was fueled by Mesereau's remark during his opening statement that jurors would hear from Jackson on certain issues.

They did hear from Jackson when his attorneys played nearly three hours of videotaped interviews with the entertainer in which he talked about his feelings for children, which he said were innocent and loving.

"I haven't been betrayed or deceived by children," he said at one point. "Adults have let me down."

Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting the boy in February or March 2003 when the youth was 13. He is also charged with giving the teenager alcohol and conspiring to hold his family captive to get them to rebut a documentary in which the boy appeared with Jackson as the entertainer says he let children into his bed for innocent, nonsexual sleepovers.

Tucker, who costarred with Jackie Chan in the "Rush Hour" movies, testified Tuesday that he met Jackson's accuser at a benefit while the boy was battling cancer in 2000. He said the boy's father introduced himself at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Hollywood and asked him to take part.

Tucker said that a few days after the benefit the boy told him it hadn't made any money, so he wired "probably $1,500 or more" to a foundation for the family.
Tucker said he also took the boy's family to an amusement park and on shopping trips to a mall.

"Tonight Show" host Jay Leno cracked a few jokes in court Tuesday, but in the end the defense wasn't laughing, reports CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales. He was yet another witness in this case that did not say what jurors had been promised they would hear.

Leno said he makes many calls to ill children, but he grew suspicious when he began receiving overly effusive voice mail messages from the boy in 2000. He said he thought it strange that a boy would tell a comedian in his 50s that he was his hero.

"I'm not Batman," Leno said, to laughter throughout the courtroom.

Leno said the boy left so many messages that he finally approached comedian Louise Palanker, a friend who was among several comedians helping the boy's family.

"I said, 'What's the story here? This doesn't sound like a 12-year-old. This seems a little scripted,'" Leno testified. But Leno said the boy never asked for money and he never gave him any, though he did send "Tonight Show" memorabilia and a picture.

"That wasn't what the defense promised the jury, but may have been enough because it clearly ties into the defense theory that this cancer survivor and his family, his mother notably, were leveraging his cancer condition to target celebrities so he could extract money from them," said CBS News Legal Analyst Trent Copeland. "So while it wasn't a lot, it was something from the defense."

Courtroom observer and former prosecutor Anne Bremner disagrees.

"This was a real misfire out here in the twilight zone of the Michael Jackson trial," she said Wednesday on CBS News' The Early Show. "There was nothing redeeming for the defense. In fact, there was a help to the prosecution in making this accuser look for sympathetic."
Hours after testifying, Leno was again mocking the pop star on the "Tonight Show." He showed the audience mock footage of his day in court, including a scene in which young male witnesses were sipping on drinks in martini glasses.

The defense also called Mary Holzer, a paralegal at a law firm that handled a lawsuit by the accuser's family. The family accused guards at J.C. Penney of roughing them up after the boy left a store with clothes that had not been paid for. The family received a $152,000 settlement.

Holzer said the mother at one point told her the injuries she claimed to have received from the guards were inflicted by her then-husband. Holzer said she told the mother she could not lie, and the mother responded with a threat.

The mother claimed that her brother-in-law was is in the Mexican Mafia and "that she knows where I live and they would come and kill me and my 9-year-old daughter," Holzer said.

This was key testimony, says Copeland.

"She really tied in, I think, for the first time this whole theory that this is a grifter family, this is a family who really goes out and tries to extort money under circumstances that are fraudulent," he said. "The jury was riveted by it."

The accuser's mother previously testified that Holzer was dishonest and a huge Jackson fan.