SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Prosecutors increased Michael Jackson's legal jeopardy Friday with the unsealing of a grand jury indictment that accused him of a conspiracy involving child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion in addition to molesting a 12-year-old boy.
With a slight nod, Jackson pleaded not guilty during the arraignment. Unlike his demeanor when he was arraigned in January on criminal child molestation charges filed by Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon, the pop star was subdued, both in court and outside.
The conspiracy charge stunned many of Jackson's supporters.
"This was a terrible day for Michael," said Najee Ali, a Los Angeles activist who has organized bus trips to the courthouse here in support of Jackson. "This takes the case in an entirely new direction."
Details of the new charge were not revealed in the indictment, and the names of other alleged conspirators, who have not yet been charged, were whited out in the copies released to the public.
However, the alleged victim's mother has accused two of Jackson's former employees, Vincent Amen and Frank Tyson, of threatening family members to keep them from going to the police, according to Joseph Tacopina, the New York attorney who represents the two men. Amen and Tyson also have been accused of holding the boy and his family against their will at Jackson's Neverland Ranch.
Tacopina on Friday said he did not know whether his clients, who deny the accusations, were named in the indictment.
"I wish someone would tell me," he said.
Whomever the alleged co-conspirators turn out to be, adding the conspiracy charge could give prosecutors substantial advantages, legal experts said.
To prove the molestation charges, prosecutors will have to rely to some extent on the testimony and credibility of the alleged victim, who has been described as a recovering leukemia patient. Testimony from children in such cases is often problematic. In 1993, Jackson was accused of molesting another boy, but after the singer and the child's family reached a multimillion-dollar civil settlement, the boy declined to testify, and no charges were ever filed.
By contrast, the conspiracy charge could be proved with witnesses other than the alleged molestation victim, particularly if prosecutors can win the cooperation of one or more of the alleged co-conspirators.
