Tonight Show: Mesereau interview (June 14 2005) - NBC: Tonight Show
Interview Show: The Tonight Show
Air date: June 17 2005
Guest: Thomas Mesereau
transcript courtesy of 'Wolf' at MJJF[SM=x47917]
JAY LENO: First off, thank you so much for coming. We ah, we kinda play different roles in these things – I’m a comedian and my job is obviously to make light of all this, you’re of course a defense attorney...to take it all very seriously.
You know, the Michael, sort of, we see, is obviously different from the one you knew. Tell us – we all know the one we know – tell us about the one you know.
THOMAS MESEREAU: The Michael Jackson I know is a very sensitive, honest, down to earth, kind-hearted person, much more simple in his tastes than you probably think, very kind-hearted, loves people, loves to help people who are in trouble, he’s too nice to too many people and that’s how he got in the trouble he was in.
But he’s one of my favourite human beings, he’s misunderstood, and one of my jobs in the trial was to make sure the jury knew who he was and I think they did and that’s why they acquitted him of every count.
Leno: Now, you refer to him and you make this point of innocence versus not guilty…
MESEREAU: ...yes…
Leno: …explain.
MESEREAU: Well, he’s innocent of these charges. And Michael is the kind of person, when you sit down with him and get to know him, and hear his philosophy of life and what he wants to achieve in life, you realize that he could never hurt a child and he never has hurt a child.
Now, thousands and thousands of children and their parents have flocked to Michael Jackson all over the world; a couple suddenly invented some claims and wanted money, and he made a mistake in the early 90’s of paying them money to get rid of them.
And it was really insignificant money giving what he was making, he’s probably grossed over a billion dollars in his life, and all of his business advisors are saying Michael, you’ve got bigger fish to fry, just pay whatever it takes, get rid of these cases.
Unfortunately, once he did that, others thought they could get an easy payday as well, and hence he got in this kind of trouble.
Leno: Do you believe in all of your clients, is that an important part of your defense? Do you personally have to believe or can you defend someone you don’t quite believe, but maybe the letter of the law has been violated –
MESEREAU: There are two major purposes that I have in my profession – one is to make sure that innocent people like Michael Jackson are not convicted, and two is to make sure this system works so prosecutors and cops don’t abuse their power because if you let them do it they will routinely do it, and they have throughout American history.
Leno: Now does it bother you that, I think, only 34% of the public did not believe the verdict?
MESEREAU: It does bother me, because it’s a result of spin from the media and not knowing the evidence – if you really look at the evidence in the case, they had nothing. They had absolutely nothing.
And networks like court TV do their best to spin a conviction, but you can’t spin a conviction, you have to have evidence to support it, the evidence wasn’t there.
Leno: Let me ask about the jury for a second, I know you were instrumental in picking the jury, and again I’ve been told this, that Michael was quite concerned that there were no African Americans on there, I mean literally like – what’s going on here.
MESEREAU: Well, Michaels from a prominent African American family and as you would expect he was hoping to have some African American representation on the jury.
But I have to tell you, once this jury was picked, I had no problem with this jury – I thought they were very strong willed, independent minded people, smart, nobody was going to push them around and they were going to follow the law and do the right thing – and that’s exactly what they did.
Leno: So, how do you pick a juror? I mean, what do you look for in a case like – cause I have to admit, watching from the sidelines – this ones a parent, 3 children, this ones a – postal worker possibly – this seems pretty conservative, a little out of the mainstream, not Hollywood kind of wacky –
MESEREAU: I wasn’t worried about conservative people, Santa Maria is a conservative community, the communities around Santa Maria are conservative.
What I wanted were people who I thought were strong willed, independent minded, and open to look at the evidence, and not be hood-wanked or influenced by outside forces, which were trying to basically spin the case in a way that wasn’t realistic. We got some very honourable, courageous people, and they did the right thing.
Leno: Did it bother you that some of the jurors came out afterwards and said they think he might have been guilty of something in the past, but couldn’t prove it this time?
MESEREAU: Well, they think he might have been – that’s like saying, we suspect it but nothing’s ever been proven – because nothing was proven.
The prosecution, in an act of desperation, tried to say he molested people in the past. They mentioned 3 young men, one of whom was Macaulay Culkin, and said nothing ever happened to us, we were not molested.
They mentioned a fourth person who never showed up, and they mentioned a fifth person who showed up and said I was tickled improperly and I wanted money and I took it, after denying that it had happened – his mother took money, and she also sold the story to a tabloid.
Leno: We never heard that there were any young girls there, I mean we hear of children going to neverland, but it all seems to be boys –
MESEREAU: False. Absolutely false.
Leno: - okay.
MESEREAU: Women testified that they stayed in his room, which – and by the way, his room is a two story duplex, a huge duplex, that’s what we call his room – and women stayed there, mothers stayed there, parents stayed there, kids stayed there.
And any time a child came up to him and said we want to play in your room, which he has arcade games and that kind of thing, he always said I want your parents here right now and I want their permission. And the parents were free to stay – and we had parents testify who did stay.
So a lot of this was spin by the prosecution because they wanted to try and convict him through spin. They had nothing to deal with in the courtroom.
Leno: Is he childlike? I mean, it’s almost hard for me to believe that you can be such a polished entertainer – I mean, when you spend time with him, is it like spending time with a child?
MESEREAU: He is childlike. And he’s been very vocal when interviewed about why he’s childlike. He had no childhood – he was working clubs at 3 in the morning when he was a very small child – he said he used to gaze at school yards and wonder what it was like to be just a spontaneous kid.
He couldn’t do that, he was disciplined very strictly, and he feels as if he never really had a free and spontaneous childhood.
And he also, he feels as if he’s been let down by adults most of his life. He was a child asked to sign papers, he didn’t know what money was, all this money was spinning around him – he got taken advantage of, and he has an empathy for children because he thinks children need more attention in the world.
He’s helped kids with AIDs around the planet, he’s helped kids with all sorts of diseased – Ryan White, a young man that had AIDs and died of it, he took care of him.
When a little child in the early 80’s was doused with gasoline by his father in orange county Michael paid his bills, he’s paid bills for injured children all over the world.
A lot of this the prosecution tried to bury, because they wanted to make him look like a monster – and they failed.
Leno: When that documentary came out, and Michael said about sharing your bed and that type of thing, what should the prosecution have done?
I mean, when people say, lets say I live in a neighbourhood and I know there’s a 45 year old man over there, I see young boys going in and out or children going in and out, and I hear rumours of alcohol, rumours of pornography, locks on the doors – should they not have investigated?
MESEREAU: Well first of all, what he said in the documentary was I gave this child my bed and I slept on the floor, and I’ve never done anything sexual with a child – that’s in the documentary.
There are also some outtakes that were not included in the documentary where he even expanded on that – he said I would slit my wrists before I would hurt a child. Okay, so the prosecution tried to spin this so that you didn’t know that’s in the documentary.
The second thing is, yes, if you think there is a valid claim of child molestation, you should investigate – and they did. 70 officers raided neverland, they couldn’t find any forensic evidence to support the claims – no DNA, no hair, no fibre, no fluids, nothing.
Leno: Is that uncommon? I mean is…I’ll tell you what, we’ll take a break and follow up on this.
----
Leno: Welcome back, talking with tom Mesereau the lead defense attorney in the Michael Jackson trial. It’s fascinating to hear your side of it, we were just talking about DNA evidence and you mention when they went to the neverland ranch they found not a trace of DNA evidence – no fluids, no hair, is that – I mean, people who are pedophiles, is that common that they would be very careful or no?
MESEREAU: Well, I mean I don’t know what the answer to that is, but certainly they do find in this day and age, DNA – it’s an easy thing to find, and it lasts for hundreds of years – so it’s significant they couldn’t find any forensic evidence whatsoever to prove this crime, because the crime didn’t happen.
Leno: Let me ask you about the jury – I was sort of stunned to hear the jury was not sequestered. Because this is all anybody talks about – if I’m on the jury and I walk into McDonalds or anywhere, someone’s going to go hey – you’re going to hear something – it’s on every TV it’s on every radio, you hear jokes – you hear information that maybe they shouldn’t be privy too. Weren’t you worried about that?
MESEREAU: I really wasn’t. The judge was a very very good judge; he had the full respect of the jury I could tell. And he told them very clearly you cannot listen to any media, you cannot expose yourself to any outside influence, you must follow the law and look at the evidence in the court room.
And in my opinion, sequestered juries tend to be uncomfortable juries – you know, they’re confined, they have limitations, people are watching them, generally I don’t like it. And I really had a feeling they’d be fair, and they were.
Leno: The media circus – were you surprised at the extent of people hiding in the bushes, seeing whether you put two sugars in your coffee and this type of thing –
MESEREAU: No, I wasn’t surprised, I expected that. This has real international interest. Michael is a mega star, he is popular all over the world, and we had support all over the world for our side, so I’m not surprised.
Leno: Now, they’re not allowed to watch the pundits, but you – when you go home – would you turn on and see what some of the experts were saying?
MESEREAU: Once in a while – I was working very hard, you know normally I read three newspapers a day, and I wasn’t reading any except on the weekends. So once and a while for a break I would, and generally I was pretty unimpressed.
Leno: Were they accurate?
MESEREAU: Generally no.
Leno: Agenda? Did they have an agenda-?
MESEREAU: Oh, take court TV for example. I’d always been a fan of court TV; I’d always respected court TV, particularly when Steve Brill was running it.
In this particular case, in my opinion they became a tabloid – they had their own agenda, they misstated the facts, they didn’t understand the significance of what was going on in the courtroom, and that’s why their major critics were stunned by the verdict, and why now they’re trying to say there’s something wrong with jury, there’s something wrong with the system – they were humiliated because they never really understood what was going on in the courtroom.
Leno: Now, the district attorney, Sneddon, is he a fair guy?
MESEREAU: In my opinion, no. In this particular case, he had a personal vendetta against Michael Jackson, he wasn’t objective, he saw things that didn’t exist – when you’re not objective, when you’re too personally involved, you can really mischaracterize your case, and he mischaracterized his case from day one.
Leno: I mean, was he – because of the events from ten years ago?
MESEREAU: You know, I don’t know exactly why he got so interested in Michael Jackson, but…he flew to Australia at one point in the mid-nineties to try and find an alleged victim, and the person said take a hike, get out of here.
He had a website at the sheriffs department to try and see if he could find witnesses to build a case – it was like an open casting call on Michael Jackson. And the best they could come up with was this family that we thoroughly discredited from A to Z. From A to Z.
Leno: Now, have you talked to Michael since the verdict?
MESEREAU: Oh sure.
Leno: And how’s he doing?
MESEREAU: He’s very drained, physically and emotionally. He was dehydrated, he had trouble eating and sleeping, he’s going to have to spend time recovering.
Leno: Let me ask you a question, and this is something I saw people speculate on – every time it seemed like the trial was going one way or the other, he would go to the hospital. And – I don’t mean this to be flippant – but, there’s the umbrella guy, there’s the magician, why isn’t there a doctor with him all the time? Why would he have to get up -?
(Small audience laughter)
..No, I’m not being a wise guy, it seems like in the middle of the night he would be taken to the hospital – it seems like he could have a staff of physicians there.
MESEREAU: I haven’t asked that question, he has had personal physicians in the past. He didn’t intend to take these trips to the hospital, he had legitimate physical problems.
I mean, he has a very serious back problem, and he really had emotional problems – he had trouble eating and sleeping – Michael was not emotionally built for this kind of a process – month after month of sitting in a court room listening to all this nonsense thrown at you, knowing your life and your freedom are on the line. It was a very hard process for him emotionally.
Leno: Now, I know a lot of people have been critical of you, but I know you do an awful lot of pro bono work – terrific, within different communities, and that – is that why you took this, you saw it as injustice?
MESEREAU: I saw it as tremendous injustice. I had known randy Jackson for a long time, he’s a good friend of mine – he asked me if I would talk to Michael about his case, and I flew to Florida, met Michael and talked to him extensively about it.
And I just, very quickly – and I’m a very intuitive person – I said, this cannot be the monster they’re portraying. What is this?
Because what they were saying was, that this kid had cancer and that he intentionally plied him with alcohol so he could molest him, and you get to know Michael and you say this is absurd.
They’re also saying he masterminded a conspiracy to abduct a family to Brazil – Michael Jackson wouldn’t even know how to conceive of such a thing. Michael Jackson is an artist – he’s a creative spirit – he likes to sit in a tree and compose music, and he freely says that. You know…
Leno: That’s where my part comes in, sitting in the tree. I have to do the sitting in the tree stuff…
(Small laughter)
MESEREAU: Well he loves climbing trees – he says other people like football and baseball, I like climbing trees. He freely admits that. (Mez smiling)
Leno: Well Tom, I appreciate you coming here and telling us your side of the story – thank you very much.
Tonight Show: Mesereau interview (June 14 2005) ![[SM=x47919]](http://photobucket.com/albums/y160/mjfansquare/smiles/cool.gif)
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