By Dan Whitcomb and Alexandria Sage
Santa Maria, California - Prosecutors began wrapping up their case against Michael Jackson on Tuesday, opening the way for what promises to be a celebrity roll-call of witnesses in the singer's defence.
Santa Barbara county district attorney Tom Sneddon said he intended to rest his case next week after more than two months of testimony into accusations that 46-year-old Jackson molested a teenage boy and conspired to imprison his family at Neverland Valley Ranch.
Jackson's lead attorney, Tom Mesereau, told Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville that he planned to call "lots of witnesses" in Jackson's defence.
Mesereau has said these may include some of the most famous people in America, including actress Elizabeth Taylor, singers Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross, basketball star Kobe Bryant, and talk-show host Jay Leno.
Defence lawyers say Leno will testify that the boy at the centre of the case sought financial help from him, bolstering their claims that the molestation accusations were invented by the family to extort money from Jackson.
The mother of the boy, a key witness for both sides, stepped down from the stand on Tuesday after more than four days of rambling and often acrimonious testimony.
She told jurors that she never sought money from Leno, never called the comic or any other celebrity seeking help and was unaware of her son doing so.
Mesereau, who has portrayed the woman as a swindler who used her son's cancer to play on the sympathies of the rich, poured scorn on her claim that she was unaware of fund-raising efforts by celebrities and never used the proceeds for her own benefit.
"Do you recall using any money donated for (your son's) benefit on cosmetic surgery?" Mesereau asked her. She responded: "No, I used a credit card and it's still outstanding."
Jackson is charged with molesting the woman's son, then 13, at Neverland in February or March of 2003, plying the boy with alcohol in order to abuse him and conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion. He faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted.
The boy's Spanish-speaking grandmother testified on Tuesday that after her grandchildren returned from Neverland in March of 2003 they were not the same loving children she once knew.
"Those children that came were not my grand-kids," the elderly woman said, speaking through an interpreter. "When they came back they didn't talk to me the same way. They were different kids. Even up to now (Jackson's accuser) is not the same child."
The grandmother said that after leaving Neverland the family was intimidated by Jackson's aides, telling the jury that she was inundated with telephone calls from an associate of the pop icon.
She said she once caught a man throwing rocks at her home. The man drove away before she could call police.
Michael Davy, a retired counsellor at the school formerly attended by Jackson's accuser, corroborated testimony by the boy's mother when he told jurors that he once caught a man in a car videotaping the children outside the school.
Jurors were shown a series of books and magazines featuring nudity that were seized from Neverland in a 2003 police raid. Defence lawyers suggested that some of the books were art and that the magazines were collector's items.
Defence attorney Robert Sanger said that one of the books, which was described by a police detective as "shocking", was in fact a spoof that used other body parts - such as armpits and folds of skin - to resemble female genitalia.