Jackson jurors begin weighing fate of pop star

SANTA MARIA - Jurors have ended their first hours of deliberations in Michael's Jackson's molestation trial after hearing dueling closing arguments that portrayed the pop star as either a sexual predator or the naive victim of a family of hardened liars.

The jury of eight women and four men met behind closed doors for about two hours before quitting for the weekend and being shuttled out of the central California courthouse in a pair of white vans with a police escort.

Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville told jurors they remained "the impartial judges of the facts" after the bitter four-month trial.

Prosecutor Ron Zonen urged jurors to cut through Jackson's aura of celebrity and eccentricity and convict the pop star.

In his final statement, Zonen returned to the charge that the 46-year-old Jackson was a serial pedophile with a history of preyeing on young boys and sleeping with them.

"In your entire life you have never heard of another middle-aged man doing that. If someone in your neighborhood were taking a 12-year-old boy into his bed amid a sea of pornography and alcohol, you would be on the phone with the police immediately," he said.

In protest, Jackson's sisters, La Toya, Janet and Rebbie, who were sitting in the first row of the courtroom, stood up and walked out as Zonen began.

Earlier, lead defence lawyer Tom Mesereau pleaded with jurors to acquit, saying it was impossible to believe Jackson was the ruthless predator prosecutors charge.

Mesereau said Jackson's now 15-year-old accuser lied on the witness stand and to police and that the boy and his family had been "swimming around lawyers, swimming around manipulation, swimming around false claims for years."

"It only takes one lie under oath to throw this case out of court by you, and you can't count the lies," Mesereau said.

Mesereau also took aim at the prosecution argument that Jackson targeted vulnerable boys, including his accuser, a former cancer patient.

"Remember their basic claim is that he is akin to a monster. That he would take a cancer patient and see him as a target. ... Does what you've seen in this trial reflect that? Is it even possible? It's not," he said.

Both sides ended by showing jurors clips from highly charged video testimony seen earlier at the trial.

The prosecution relied on a clip from Jackson's accuser in his first police interview, seen widely as some of the most effective evidence in its favor.

Mesereau opted to replay more than 20 minutes of outtakes from a 2003 documentary in which Jackson describes his love of children and how he built his escapist Neverland estate to compensate for his own lost childhood.

'MICHAEL JACKSON IS LOVE'

Jackson, who sat impassively through the last day of courtroom proceedings, looked shaken as he returned to Neverland to await the verdict. The pop star was treated for dehydration late on Thursday at a local hospital.

Outside the packed courtroom, several dozen supporters cheered and carried placards of encouragement. One sign said: "Michael Jackson is love."

The jurors, who live in Santa Maria and surrounding communities, will weigh the charges behind closed doors until they reach verdicts on all 10 criminal counts or find themselves deadlocked.

The panel will have to consider testimony from some 140 witnesses and more than 600 items of items of evidence.

Jackson has pleaded innocent to molesting his accuser in February or March of 2003, plying him with alcohol in order to abuse him, and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He faces more than two decades in prison if convicted on all charges.

- REUTERS