For celebrity peepers who can’t get enough of Michael Jackson, The Smoking Gun has obtained and is posting on its website the 1903-page record of grand jury testimony that led to his indictment on molestation and conspiracy charges. Jackson was indicted by a Santa Barbara, Calif., grand jury on charges that he molested a 13-year-old boy and conspired with several associates to falsely imprison the child and his family at the singer’s Neverland Ranch. Judge Rodney Melville has shrouded the case documents in extraordinary secrecy. Even the 13-page indictment was redacted, with six entire pages removed.
But The Smoking Gun on Thursday posted hundreds of pages of the secret testimony and is expected to post more on Friday. “This is a very famous guy charged with a heinous crime,” William Bastone, co-founder and editor of the website, told the Los Angeles Times. “And nobody really knows anything about the charges. Certainly you could make an argument about the public’s right to know. How is Michael Jackson being treated by the criminal justice system, and were the charges ginned up against him or are they legitimate?”
Link: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/021505mjgrandjury.html