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Michael Jackson case nears finish

Prosecutors portrayed Michael Jackson as a hard-drinking, porn-collecting pedophile to "dirty up" the pop star because they couldn't prove their case that he molested a child, Jackson's lawyer said in closing arguments.

Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau began his closing argument Thursday after Senior Deputy District Attorney Ron Zonen told jurors that Jackson had brought his accuser, then a 13-year-old cancer survivor, "into the world of the forbidden."

Mesereau was to conclude his argument yesterday, followed by a prosecution rebuttal. The case will then go to the jury.

Zonen said Jackson lowered the boy's inhibitions by giving him alcohol and showing him pornography before molesting him in the bedroom of the entertainer's Neverland Ranch.

The defense countered that the accuser's family consisted of "con artists, actors and liars," adding that the prosecution showed the weakness of its case by personally attacking Mesereau during closing arguments.

"Whenever a prosecutor does that you know they're in trouble," Mesereau said. "This is not a popularity contest between lawyers."

Prosecutors, Mesereau said, also engaged in a "nasty attempt, a barbaric attempt" to attack Jackson personally by bringing up his financial problems, alcohol consumption, collection of adult magazines and "sagging music career."

Jackson, who looked glum 24 hours earlier, said "I'm OK" as he left court Thursday.

The 46-year-old entertainer is charged with molesting the boy in 2003, plying him with wine and conspiring to hold his family captive to get them to rebut the documentary Living With Michael Jackson. In the documentary, Jackson holds hands with the boy and says he allows children into his bed for innocent, non-sexual sleepovers.

Zonen said it was toward the end of a period in which the accuser and his family stayed at Neverland that "the behavior had turned to something terribly illegal."

He said Jackson began giving the boy alcohol and even though his mother at that time was unaware of any molestation, she insisted that her family leave Neverland.
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