VIDEO: Thomas Mesereau Interview

On Friday evening I was contacted by a fan-site called Positively Michael who had organised a podcast with Thomas Mesereau, the lawyer who secured Michael Jackson's acquittal in his 2005 child molestation trial. The following day, Mr Mesereau was scheduled to spend an hour answering questions from specially invited contributors, and I was the only journalist to receive an invitation.

I've been covering the Michael Jackson story for four years now. My first published article on the subject of Michael Jackson's trial was in 2008, when I interviewed Aphrodite Jones about her book 'Michael Jackson Conspiracy'.

Aphrodite was one of the handful of journalists allowed inside the courtroom for every day of Michael Jackson's 2005 trial. After his acquittal, she decided to write a book about how she'd witnessed firsthand the media's intentional misrepresentation of the evidence and testimony in the case. But despite having seven previous New York Times bestselling books under her belt, no publisher would touch the manuscript. They weren't interested in any pro-Jackson material.

When Aphrodite self-published the book, I decided to interview her. Our interview was published in a small, short-lived magazine called 'Deadline' and Aphrodite described it as the best article she'd ever seen written about her work.

In May of the following year, the media's misrepresentation of the Michael Jackson trial formed a key part of the introduction to my self-published music magazine 'JIVE' and since Michael Jackson's death, my work on his trial has been published by Sawf News and the Huffington Post. So when I was presented with the opportunity to interview Thomas Mesereau on-air, however briefly, I couldn't say no.

During our conversation, Mr Mesereau spoke about the media's skewed coverage of the trial, why particular pundits are still bitter about the verdict, the peculiar closeness between the prosecutors and their witnesses, and why he felt Michael Jackson would be abused by prison guards and die in jail if he was convicted.

Here is the audio of our ten-minute exchange:



Click here to download the entire podcast, free of charge, from iTunes.