Trial of Michael Jackson
2005 trial involving recording artist Michael Jackson
People v. Jackson (full title: 1133603: The People of the State of California v. Michael Joseph Jackson) was a 2005 criminal trial held in Santa Barbara County Superior Court in Santa Maria, California. The American pop singer Michael Jackson was charged with molesting Gavin Arvizo, who was 13 years old at the time of the alleged abuse, at his Neverland Ranch estate in Los Olivos, California.
Jackson was first accused of child sexual abuse in 1993; he denied the allegations and settled in a civil lawsuit. In 2003, the documentary Living with Michael Jackson showed Jackson holding hands with Arvizo and defending his practice of sharing his bed with children, triggering an investigation. Jackson was indicted on four counts of molesting a minor, four counts of intoxicating a minor to molest him, one count of attempted child molestation, one count of conspiring to hold the Arvizo family captive and conspiring to commit extortion and child abduction.
The jury selection began on January 31, 2005. Gavin and his brother testified that Jackson had given them alcohol, showed them pornography, masturbated before them, and made sexual advances. The defense characterized the witnesses for the prosecution as disgruntled ex-employees or individuals seeking to exploit Jackson for money.
“Trial of Michael Jackson” enters the record as 2005 trial involving recording artist Michael Jackson. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Trial, Michael and Jackson can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trial of Michael Jackson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.