Innocent Or Guilty?

Then there was June Chandler, Jordy Chandler's mother, who disclosed that she'd not seen her son since winning the $23 million settlement. The boy lives with his father and refuses to meet his mother. She admitted to allowing Jackson and Jordy to sleep together. Sobbing, she told the court, "If I could have him back, I'd do it differently, I'd refuse the money, I'd go to the police."

Defence attorney Mesereau did his best with each witness, and played up Culkin's denial of inappropriate sexual behaviour, but a horrifying pattern was emerging—that of a famous and wealthy man who, at the very least, spent far too much time with children, and quite possibly molested them.

The singer's private life is unusual in more ways than one. In Living with Michael Jackson, he's shown dangling his newborn baby son from the balcony of a German hotel. Also, Jackson's two older children, Prince Michael and Paris, wear masks whenever they're on camera. This, says Jackson, is to protect their identity from a paparazzi onslaught.

However, as the respected writer Maureen Orth points out in a riveting series of articles in Vanity Fair magazine, it's very likely that the children are masked because they are probably of pure white blood. In other words, she alleges, Jackson's aversion to his Negro blood led him to have someone else father his children. Orth cites Jackson's extensive plastic facial surgery, designed to modify his African features, and his ever-whitening skin, to suggest that he hates his own race.

Media coverage of the trial has been intense with more than 2,000 journalists and others accredited to enter the Santa Maria court premises. Some 20 TV trucks transmit daily coverage of the sordid proceedings. "It's a circus," says University of California media studies professor Toby Miller. "These are like the last day of the Caesars. The fall of imperial Rome was marked by huge gladiatorial shows, bread and circuses. One could argue that this country has a similar fin-de-siecle malaise that manifests itself through things like the Jackson trial."

Others are more sanguine. Former prosecutor Susan Filan says highly publicised celebrity trials are good for American justice. "It shows that we in the law are working hard, not having fun, that issues are complicated, not black and white, and that our system of law is the best in the world. That's the bright side of the Jackson trial. The dark side is that come what may, a lot of people have been shown to be deeply troubled and disturbed here, and that's never a pleasant thing to contemplate."