It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove.

Anyone who’s writing anything these days has to put in their two-cents’ worth on Michael Jackson’s recent acquittal. I may as well join the fray.

First, let me get a couple of observations out of the way that pre-date Mr. Jackson’s legal troubles. It cannot be disputed that the guy is talented. There’s simply no denying it. Love him or hate him, back in the 1980s, and even through the 1990s, there was one album that would absolutely guarantee putting people on the dance floor -- Thriller. Apart from The Beatles, I don’t remember another album in my lifetime that contained so many number one hits and absolutely spot-on danceable songs. Billy Jean. Beat It. Thriller. Those are the first three that pop into my head and if you were in a club, or at a wedding, or attending a party, any time after 1985, if any one of these songs started, everybody rushed to the dance floor. (And don’t forget Off The Wall, which came before Thriller and has some exceptionally danceable stuff as well). If you saw Jennifer Garner’s flick 13 Going On 30, they do a pretty good job of capturing the impact of Thriller -- when that song started playing, people started dancing. That’s just the way it was.

That said, Jackson also has an indisputable weirdness that turns many people off. The umbrella man. The surgeries. The chimp. The glove. The falsetto. The skin. The nose. The Sergeant Pepper clothes. Neverland Ranch. Hanging his kid from the balcony. Just to name the top ten that come to mind. And all of that weirdness creates an aura that evokes a sense of unease and suspicion about everything associated with him.

I’m not trying to suggest that Jackson molested any children, nor would I attempt to convince you that he didn’t. But rumour, inuendo, and suggestion, combined with the aura of strangeness surrounding Jackson, is not enough to sustain a criminal conviction. More importantly, this combination should never be enough to sustain a conviction. Hey, if weirdness was a crime, they could lock up half the country.

The thing is, our judicial system is based on the presumption of innocence, and the requirement that the State prove a criminal case against a defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. That requirement is built into the Constitution: The Due Process clause protects an accused person from being convicted of a crime except upon proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” of every fact necessary to prove the commission of the crime charged. That’s a heavy burden to carry, and it is heavy for a reason -- to best prevent an innocent man or woman from being convicted of a crime that he or she did not commit.

We know that this high burden of proof sometimes allows guilty persons to escape conviction, especially if the case is mishandled or tried poorly. (Do I have to say “O.J. Simpson” to make that point any more strongly?) But the old adage that it is better to have a legal system that lets one guilty man go free rather than convict one hundred innocent men is one that we should all abide by and adhere to. What would be the alternative? We certainly can’t have a criminal justice system based on polls, or what people believe should be the outcome, or what the popular sentiment is on a particular day. If that was our system, Jackson would be sitting in jail right now because the press and the public had him convicted and sentenced over a year ago.

Our system of justice is based on requirements of proof that protect the innocent. This protection comes with the inherent risk of allowing a guilty man to go free. However, anything else would lead to disrespect for the courts, the laws, the police, and anything and anyone else in authority. Could you imagine what our lives would be like if an arrest equaled a conviction, or if your fate hung on how many people liked you that day, or how 1000 randomly surveyed people voted in a particular poll?

Let me give you another example. You may have heard it said that a good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. This is the absolute truth, because the grand jury is only an initial step in a prosecution. A prosecutor, without having to worry about cross-examination or rules against hearsay or leading questions, or any other details of trial, simply presents only the evidence that the prosecutor knows will lead to an indictment. The prosecutor then asks the grand jury to vote on whether this selected evidence is sufficient to bring the case to trial. If the grand jury votes in favor of the indictment, the case proceeds to trial. However, once trial starts, the defendant can defend himself, with lawyers, motions, witnesses, and whatever evidence he or she wants to bring in to rebut the State’s accusations.

Could you imagine if a trial followed the grand jury scheme? There’d be no defense lawyers, no cross-examination, no rules against hearsay, no room for exculpatory evidence, and no protections for an innocent person faced with a strong circumstantial case. In that system, you or I could be convicted based on the statements of an irate neighbor, an angry ex-spouse, or the nut-job you cut off on your way to work this morning.

In our system as presently constituted, the statements of the witnesses are tested by cross-examination, can be attacked by a defense attorney who has a copy of a previous statement that is inconsistent with the trial testimony, and can be refuted by statements from other witnesses. As importantly, a witness’s demeanor in front of a jury at trial can impact the jury’s feelings about the witness’s credibility and cause it to disbelieve his or her story.

That’s precisely what happened in the Jackson trial. Under cross-examination at trial, the State’s case didn’t hold up primarily because the alleged victim’s mother folded like a bad hand at Texas hold ’em. That doesn’t mean that she was lying (although she certainly didn’t come across well). But when the State’s star witness is not particularly credible, the State should think long and hard about pursuing the case. That’s part of the system, too. If your evidence isn’t enough to convince twelve people that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, then the State should not prevail, no matter what the popular impressions of the media and the public are.

Personally, I suspect that the State was more interested in prosecuting the Jackson case simply for the sake of prosecuting it, and not because it had sufficient evidence to actually sustain a conviction. Obviously, I’m just speculating here, but based on my own observations while working for the State once upon a time, there’s a lot of ego involved in criminal prosecutions that shouldn’t be there at all. Many prosecutors forget the ethical requirement on government attorneys that their first order of business is not necessarily to secure convictions but to assure that justice is done. That sometimes means refusing to prosecute bad cases. But I digress.

The point of all this is that, like it or not, the system worked for Jackson. Of course, it helps to have the finest attorneys money can buy, but that’s an unfortunate by-product of both the justice system and the star-struck society in which we live. (I suspect that if this had been State of California v. Mike Jackson, School Bus Driver, Mr. Jackson would be doing 10 to 20 in the State lock-up right now.)

All that being said, and after all is said and done, let’s hope that the King of Pop thinks twice before he has any more sleep-overs, or serves cookies and milk to anyone but his own kids. Go be weird, Michael. Just do it by yourself, in the privacy of your own amusement park.