Ex-wife to testify amid Jackson legal team shake-up

SANTA MARIA, California - A judge in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial has ruled that prosecutors can call the singer's former wife, Debbie Rowe, to testify against him amid a shake-up of Jackson's defence team.

Lead defence attorney Tom Mesereau filed a notice with the court saying family attorney Brian Oxman would no longer be part of the case, but he offered no reason.

Outside the courtroom, Oxman told reporters only that there had been "consternation on our team." He was later seen hugging and shaking hands with Mesereau in the courthouse parking lot.

Rowe, the mother of two of Jackson's children, was expected to take the witness stand this week to testify that she was part of an effort to salvage the onetime King of Pop's image following the broadcast of a devastating British documentary.

Prosecutor Ron Zonen said she would tell jurors that Jackson's henchmen pressured her into giving a "highly scripted" videotaped interview supporting him in exchange for visits with her two children.

Prosecutors say Jackson's camp panicked after the documentary, "Living with Michael Jackson," aired in February of 2003 and showing him nuzzling with the young teen who would later accuse him of child molestation and defending his practice of sharing a bed with boys.

The 46-year-old pop icon is accused of conspiring to imprison the boy's family at his Neverland Valley Ranch and bullying them into making a videotaped interview -- a so-called rebuttal tape -- that has become central to the trial.

LURID TESTIMONY

In the rebuttal tape, the boy, his mother and siblings praise Jackson warmly as an ideal father figure and vehemently deny any suggestion that he acted improperly. Zonen said the performances by the family of Jackson's accuser and by Rowe in the interviews were similarly "over the top."

Jackson is charged with molesting the boy, then 13, at Neverland and faces more than two decades in prison if he is convicted.

Jackson defence lawyer Robert Sanger urged Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville to bar Rowe from testifying, saying there was nothing improper about scripted questions during an interview. Sanger said that the defence would need to cross-examine Rowe at length, prolonging a trial that is already in its third month.

Melville, during a hearing outside the presence of the jury, said he would allow Rowe to take the witness stand but would work to limit the scope of her testimony.

When jurors returned they heard from a former Neverland security guard, Kassim Abdool, who was called by prosecutors to corroborate some of the most lurid and inflammatory testimony of the trial by fellow guard Ralph Chacon.

Chacon told the jury that he watched through a window one night as Jackson performed oral sex on a boy who later collected a US$23 million civil settlement from the entertainer. Chacon said the incident followed a Jacuzzi dip by Jackson and the boy.

Abdool said he later went into the restroom where Chacon claims he saw the oral sex and found two sets of wet swim trunks, one belonging to the boy and one to Jackson.

Abdool said he saw Jackson and the boy heading inside the main house and locking the doors. "(Jackson) was bareback and he had a towel around his waist," Abdool said, and the boy had a bathrobe thrown over him.

That account was similar to the one given by Chacon.

On cross-examination by Jackson attorney Tom Mesereau Abdool, who along with Chacon once sued Jackson and lost, conceded that in 1994 he signed a statement saying that he never saw any improper behaviour by the singer.

- REUTERS