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Jackson trial now a `strange contest'

The jury deliberating the fate of Michael Jackson may have to decide who's weirder: Jackson or the mother of his accuser.

Much of Jackson's defense came down to trying to prove the mother was the winner of the strange contest -- even though Jackson's eccentricities long ago earned him the tabloid tag "Wacko Jacko." His 2003 admission that he shared his bed with children -- non-sexually, he explained -- didn't do much to mitigate that notion.

His lawyers tried to make their client look sympathetic by portraying the mother of his accuser as more out of touch with social norms than he is.

Was his hobby of spending weeks with children creepier than her habit of sucking up to celebrities? Was his insistence that there was nothing wrong with letting children in his bed odder than her habit of saying near-strangers were like family?

Trial analyst Ann Bremner, a former prosecutor, was at a loss when asked if Jackson or the mother came off looking stranger to jurors.

"Boy," she said. "That's a contest."

The 46-year-old singer is charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy in February or March 2003. He is accused of plying him with wine and conspiring to hold his family captive to get them to rebut damaging aspects of the documentary Living With Michael Jackson, in which Jackson appeared holding hands with the boy as he talked of allowing children into his bed for what he said were innocent sleepovers.

The jury received the case Friday afternoon and deliberated for about two hours before adjourning for the weekend.

Defense attorneys ran a risk by focusing on the mother's oddities, Bremner said, explaining that her behavior -- and even alleged history of fraud -- didn't really relate to whether Jackson had molested her child. Prosecutors suggested that Jackson's behavior was not only weird but criminal, arguing that sleepovers turned into molestations.

In his closing statement, lead defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. played excerpts of an interview with Jackson to suggest that he was anything but a criminal mastermind.

In the wide-ranging interview, Jackson described writing songs in his "giving tree," his dream of a holiday for children and his desire to hold a party for animal celebrities, including Cheetah from the Tarzan movies and Lassie.

"Does he look like the kind of person who is even capable of orchestrating a criminal conspiracy of this magnitude?" Mesereau asked.
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