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Cochran signed on in early December and persuaded Jackson to return to the U.S. and take an active role in his defense. "For months," Cochran told Time, "Hard Copy and the tabloids had been beating up Michael. I wanted to bring him back here, at the center of what was happening. Michael always has and always will be the most effective advocate for the fact of his innocence." But after a month of drug therapy, Jackson was off on the fringe. So blithe was he about the charges that, when he arrived home from London, he was accompanied by two young boys from New Jersey. One friend of Jackson's told him to "get those boys out of here right away!"
Garcetti had issued no arrest warrant for Jackson. But he had obtained a warrant for a humiliating full-body exam and photo session. The Santa Barbara D.A. obtained a similar warrant, with this threat: "Michael Jackson shall be advised that he has no right to refuse the examination and photographs, and any refusal to comply with this warrant would be admissible at trial and would be an indication of his consciousness of guilt." The Santa Barbara D.A. also wanted several police to be present when Jackson was photographed, and for a ruler to be used to measure any splotches of vitiligo, a pigment disorder, that might be found on his penis. But Jackson's team managed to deflect those medieval demands.
Court-appointed psychiatrists had already reported that the boy would be harmed by testifying, but Feldman kept insisting he would bring the case to court. He also filed for the singer's financial records, almost certainly so that he could attach to them -- for all the media to see -- a transcript of ; the boy's deposition, which contained a gruesome list of Jackson's alleged pedophiliac predations. "The media ran with it," says Malcolm Boyes, producer of the tabloid TV show Inside Edition, "and it helped Feldman push the settlement."
By early January, a source close to Jackson's defense says, "the case had become a nightmare. The D.A.s were building their case on the discovery in the civil case. It was part of their strategy to wait and see what happened in there before they took their shot at us." The civil case had to be resolved quickly so that at the very least, the criminal proceedings would not benefit from it. From Jackson's viewpoint, a multimillion-dollar payoff was an easier option than the humiliation of testifying -- and the possibility of jail time.
Time: that was the ace up Feldman's sleeve. He knew Jackson was slated to make a deposition in the civil suit on Jan. 18. The star's lawyers faced three unsavory options: let Michael talk and possibly strengthen the prosecution's case against him; have him take the Fifth Amendment and a severe public relations hit; or pay the king's ransom. All Feldman had to do was let the clock tick and the meter run up. Sure enough, Jackson's team got the deposition postponed for a week, by which time negotiations for a settlement were well advanced. Now that the deal has been approved, he won't have to testify at all. Jackson settled, Feldman believes, because "his business people made a judgment call." What he surely means is, Better to be judged guilty in the court of public opinion than in a court of law.