Domestic violence expert barred from testifying

The judge in the Michael Jackson molestation trial yesterday barred prosecutors from calling an expert on domestic violence they hoped would explain the apparently erratic behaviour of the accuser's mother for jurors.

Judge Rodney Melville also said he would allow evidence showing that Mr Jackson's then-13-year-old accuser and younger brother had masturbated while looking at the pop star's pornography, potentially bolstering defence claims that the boys had run wild at Neverland.

Both rulings were setbacks for the prosecution, which is in the final stages of presenting its case to the jury of eight women and four men.

The testimony of the mother of Mr Jackson's teenage accuser is key to establishing that her family was imprisoned at Neverland, one of the 10 criminal charges against the 46-year-old entertainer.

Mr Jackson, who has pleaded innocent, faces more than two decades in prison if convicted.

Defence lawyers have painted the accuser's mother as a schemer who preyed on celebrities and turned on Mr Jackson, a benefactor for her son at a time when he was recovering from cancer.

Over four days of rambling, combative and sometimes bizarre testimony that concluded earlier this week, the woman admitted to lying under oath in an earlier lawsuit. She also said she did not go to the police when Mr Jackson's aides confined the family and warned unidentified "killers" could be after them.

At one point, she said she feared her family would be snatched away from Mr Jackson's Neverland estate in a hot air balloon. At another, she turned to jurors and pleaded with them not to judge her.

She "behaves the way she does because of her history as a victim of domestic violence", Santa Barbara County Deputy District Attorney Gordon Auchincloss said.

Defence lawyer Robert Sanger shot back: "She has said things that are preposterous... That's not because she has battered woman syndrome. That's because she lies for gain".

In the arguments, which came after jurors had been dismissed for the day, prosecutors said an expert on domestic violence could explain the mother's behaviour for a jury, including why she had returned to Neverland when she believed her children were endangered by the family's stay there.

"Mr Jackson was in a position where he could exploit the vulnerability of a woman who suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome," Mr Auchincloss said, citing the woman's claims of abuse at the hands of her ex-husband.

Judge Melville ruled that allowing such testimony would risk prolonging the trial, now entering its third month, and confusing jurors on a "peripheral" issue.

Earlier on Thursday, a former security guard at Neverland testified that he had never seen a directive like the one he saw in February 2003, telling guards that Mr Jackson's accuser was not to be allowed off the property.

The testimony, like that of the mother, cuts to the question of whether the family was held hostage at Neverland as Mr Jackson's aides rushed to put together a video featuring the family in order to shore up his reputation.

"Can you tell me based on your experience and training at Neverland, who would have the authority to make such an (order)?" Mr Auchincloss asked Brian Barron, a police officer who moonlighted as a Neverland security guard.

"Ultimately, Mr Jackson," Mr Barron said.