Pop superstar Michael Jackson is fighting for his freedom, but his child-sex trial does have its lighter moments.
The ”King of Pop” himself admitted he welcomes a bit of comic relief as he battles charges that he molested a 13-year-old boy two years ago.
In one notable exchange this week, a flight attendant offered a little courtroom quality time to a prosecutor who questioned her for saying she never saw Jackson cuddle the boy, but did witness the star putting his arm around his accuser.
Prosecutor Gordon Auchincloss asked Cynthia Ann Bell how she would describe a cuddle.
”I can show you,” she replied.
Auchincloss then turned to Judge Rodney Melville: ”Permission to approach the witness, your honour.”
Bell looked pretty flustered when asked if ”servicing the pilots” was part of her job with a charter flight company.
Auchincloss rephrased his question to make it clear he wanted to know whether she served meals to the crew.
Bell also had the court in stitches when she described how a doctor on a California-bound flight fell asleep after drinking a fair amount of booze, only to be woken when the boy flung mashed potatoes at him.
One of her colleagues, who testified earlier, appeared a little miffed by the laughter she caused when she said Jackson liked to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner. ”Well, it’s good,” she told the jurors.
Not astonishingly, Los Angeles comedy club owner Jamie Masada also caused quite a few outbursts of hilarity and appeared to outshine Jackson’s skilled lead attorney Thomas Mesereau.
When Mesereau asked him about an earlier witness and aspiring stand-up comic, Masada looked straight at the silver-haired lawyer and said: ”I think you are more funny than she is.”
Judge Melville, who told jurors he did not mind a little laughter in his courtroom, made it clear he enjoyed Masada’s humour.
”I’m thinking that between the comedians and the lawyers, I like the comedians best,” he said after Mesereau questioned a fellow attorney who appeared as a witness for the prosecution.
Turning to Mesereau, the judge added: ”You don’t need to respond.”
On another occasion, Melville evidently won the sympathy of jurors when he announced he was ending proceedings 15 minutes early, after hours of tedious testimony on the finer points of fingerprint collection techniques. ”I can’t take any more,” he exclaimed.
But some court-watchers warn there is a risk of detracting from the seriousness of the charges against Jackson, who could face 20 years behind bars if found guilty.
”Levity makes people feel like a family,” says Ann Bremner, a former prosecutor who is following the trial in Santa Maria, California. ”That can be dangerous, as there’s the aspect that you don’t convict family,” she said. — Sapa-AFP