Update: CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen rates the closing arguments. Mesereau wins.

Update: It's in the jury's hands. The Guardian says Mesereau's closing went "some way" towards overcoming the damage from the prosecution's closing.

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Original Post

The defense finished its closing argument today. As always, the prosecution will get the last word (because it has the burden of proof, they get to have two closing arguments while the defense only gets one.) The jury will begin deliberating today.

[Note: if you are affiliated with any juror, please do not read further. TalkLeft does not want to have any influence on the trial and my personal opinion is not meant to take the place of evidence at the trial, which should be the only thing jurors base their verdict on.]

by TChris

Federal prosecutors have accused former Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga of public corruption for allegedly accepting contributions to his failed 2002 bid for election to Congress in exchange for prosecutorial favors. Marlinga has denied the charges, and the strength of the government's case may be questionable, given its apparent decision to dismiss related charges against state Sen. Jim Barcia (who allegedly funneled funds to Marlinga's campaign) and real estate broker Ralph Roberts (another contributor who allegedly obtained a favor in exchange for his contribution).

This is the second time in less than a year that the U.S. Attorney's Office [in Detroit] has sought dismissal of charges in a high-profile criminal case. Last August, it persuaded a federal judge to dismiss terrorism charges against two men who were convicted in Detroit in 2003 in the first trial to result from the federal 9/11 probe.

TalkLeft would be remiss if it did not interrupt coverage of Deep Throat to inform everyone that the Runaway Bride appeared in court this morning and pleaded no contest to the felony charge of making a false statement to a law enforcement officer. She was sentenced to probation. She agreed to repay $13,000 of the search costs to the city of Duluth. The city wrote off about $30,000 in additional search-related expenses. The misdemeanor charge of false reporting of a crime was dismmissed.

Update: The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

As part of the plea agreement, she will have her criminal record expunged after she completes probation.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The Michael Jackson jury received the court's instructions today. Closing arguments are tomorrow. The trial ended with the prosecution replaying a video of the accuser detailing his allegations against Jackson. Then the defense rested without calling more witnesses, including the accuser, as originally intended. A mistake? Possibly. On the other hand, why call the accuser or his mother again for rebuttal and give them another shot with the jury.

by TChris

Make your own joke.

A chicken that got a ticket for crossing the road has clawed his way out of it. The $54 citation for impeding traffic was dismissed Friday after Linc and Helena Moore's attorney argued that the fowl was domesticated and could not be charged as livestock.

An excellent defense, it turns out.

The chicken was ticketed March 26 for impeding traffic after it wandered onto a road in Johannesburg, a rural mining community southeast of Ridgecrest.

by TChris

Reasonable parents differ in their approach to sex education. Anette Pharris, a Nashville mother, thought her 16 year old son was old enough to enjoy a parentally supervised striptease. Many may disagree with her decision to hire a stripper for her son's birthday party, but there should be much broader disapproval of the government's decision to charge Anette with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

"I tried to do something special for my son. It didn't harm him," Pharris told The Tennessean newspaper Friday.

As the boy's mother, Anette thinks it should be her job -- not the government's -- to decide whether her son is sufficiently mature to enjoy adult entertainment. She's right.

A loss for the Justice Department. A jury has found David Rosen, HillaryClinton's chief fundraiser, not guilty of campaign finance violations.

The charges grew out of a campaign fund-raising event in August 2000 called the Hollywood Gala Salute to President William Jefferson Clinton. Mr. Rosen told campaign officials in Washington that the event cost about $400,000; the government says expenses for the gala topped $1.1 million, although the total cost of the extravaganza remains unknown to this day.

Much of the testimony in the course of the three-week trial concerned the arcane rules of the Federal Election Commission during 2000, rules that Judge A. Howard Matz at one point described as even more incomprehensible than the federal tax code.

Wonkette has the racial breakdown for the OJ Simpson and Michael Jackson juries. Crooks and Liars has the video of the O'Reilly segment in which he said the Jackson Jurors are "regular folks" - they are not OJ jurors.

by TChris

This is good advice:

If you're going to sell dope, you might not want to do it next to a police car.

An officer taking a coffee (and donut?) break didn't believe the man who told him that drugs were being peddled next to his squad car. Whether he finished his coffee isn't clear, but when the officer returned to his car, he shouted "Police, don't move!"

He says the suspects dropped two baggies of pot right on the front seat of his police car.

The grand jury threw the proverbial book at the Runaway Bride today, charging her both with misdemeanor false reporting of a crime and the more serious felony offense of making a false statement to a police officer.

Jennifer Willbanks has been in a residential treatment facility for weeks. What a waste of resources. The county should have filed a civil suit to recoup the search damages and someone should have sued the media for making the rest of us watch a week of 24/7 coverage of the story.

by TChris

It's easy for police and prosecutors to say "case closed" after a suspect confesses guilt, but -- as Charles Hickman's confession demonstrates -- not all admissions of guilt are grounded in fact.

Prosecutors are baffled about why Charles Hickman, 21, confessed to the [murder of a 10 year old girl] earlier this year, telling authorities that the fourth-grader was kidnapped and killed after she saw people making methamphetamine.

DNA testing of semen recovered from the girl's body now points to a different suspect. Murder charges against Hickman have been dropped. As is usually the case when a confession proves to be false, the reason Hickman told the story is unclear.

"I don't think the science in the case lies," said Hickman's attorney, John Plummer III. "I think the police have to follow what the facts are and not speculate as to why people say what they say sometimes."

Jackson Trial Update
Friday May 13, 2005

Mark Geragos became Michael Jackson's attorney around February, 2003, when the nowinfamous Martin Bashir documentary aired, and represented Jackson when criminal charges first were brought against him. Today, Geragos testified for Jackson , and levied some serious criticism at the accuser's family. Jackson partially waived his attorney-client privilege with Geragos to enable him to testify.

Among the points made by Geragos: