A California judge sided with Michael Jackson’s estate Thursday and blocked an attempt by accusers Wade Robson and James Safechuck to obtain “the entirety of the criminal file” related to “any and all” child molestation allegations made against Jackson in both Santa Barbara County and Los Angeles County going back to the early Nineties. Photographs of Jackson’s nude body and genitalia that were taken by police in connection with a 1993 criminal investigation were part of the rejected request.
“These requests for evidence relate to basic fairness, so we can all have the same evidence,” John Carpenter, the lawyer representing Robson and Safechuck, argued in a Beverly Hills courtroom shortly before the judge shut him down. “It can’t be disputed that this evidence is relevant. … We need these subpoenas not only to get the evidence but to establish foundation [for other alleged evidence].”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael E. Whitaker said it wasn’t “lost” on him why Robson and Safechuck “want this body of evidence” leading up to trial. “It goes without saying why you want this. But you’ve got procedural problems,” the judge said. After hearing from both sides, Judge Whitaker blocked the records requests for two reasons. First, he cited a 2018 ruling quashing similar subpoenas in Robson’s case before Robson’s lawsuit was consolidated with Safechuck’s. The judge also cited a lack of notice to third parties that their private information might be contained in the witness statements and other files being sought.
Robson, 41, and Safechuck, 46, are inching closer to a possible trial next year centered on their claims that Jackson’s business entities, now controlled by his estate, should be held liable for the singer’s alleged sexual abuse of them while they were prepubescent minors. Robson, a choreographer and director who first sued the estate in May 2013, alleges his abuse started in 1990 and lasted approximately seven years. Safechuck, a writer, actor, and director who first sued in May 2014, alleges his abuse occurred between 1988 and 1992.
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After their cases were consolidated in February, Robson and Safechuck sent their jointly served subpoenas to police and prosecutors in Los Angeles County and Santa Barbara County in March. The subpoenas requested everything in Jackson’s investigation files going back to the 1993 probe of allegations the singer sexually abused a 13-year-old boy at Neverland Ranch. (No criminal charges were ever filed related to the boy. Jackson reached a private settlement with the boy’s family.)
The March subpoenas were exhaustive and detailed, seeking evidence collected during searches of both Neverland Ranch and Jackson’s Hayvenhurst home in Los Angeles as well as the photographs of Jackson’s nude body and genitalia taken by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office (SBCSO) during a search warrant served on Dec. 20, 1993. Carpenter argued Thursday that Jackson’s estate already has all the files, so his clients deserve them too. One of the estate’s defense lawyers in the current case is Tom Mesereau, the lawyer who won Jackson’s 2005 acquittal on criminal molestation charges involving another boy in Santa Barbara County.
In their motion to quash the subpoenas granted Thursday, lawyers for Jackson’s estate argued that Robson’s prior attempt to serve such subpoenas on the Los Angeles County Police Department (LAPD), the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (LACDA) and the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office (SBCDA) was blocked by a different judge in a ruling on July 5, 2018. For his part, Carpenter questioned the value of that ruling since it came after Robson’s case was dismissed on a summary judgment ruling in December 2017. (Robson, like Safechuck, appealed his case dismissal, and both cases were revived in an appellate ruling last summer that sent the lawsuits back to Los Angeles County Superior Court for trial.)
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On Thursday, Carpenter tried to argue that even though a judge shot down Robson’s subpoenas in 2018, Safechuck hadn’t issued any subpoenas to the authorities in the two counties before this year. The judge said it didn’t matter since the cases had been consolidated. The judge added that the subpoenas issued in March were defective because they lacked the necessary third-party notice.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Carpenter would seek to appeal Thursday’s ruling and possibly try to craft a new version of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office subpoena since the 2018 ruling did not involve the SBCSO. Lawyers on both sides did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone sent Thursday afternoon.
Judge Whitaker, meanwhile, ordered the parties back to court in October to discuss setting a trial date. He said considering the complexity of the case, he believes any trial would involve more than 100 hours of witness testimony, qualifying it for a special assignment to a different courtroom. He said if that’s the case, the parties likely would have to wait until at least the Spring of 2025 to face a jury. A lawyer for Jackson’s companies said last February that she didn’t believe the case would be ready for jurors until after December 2026. She said the trial likely would last more than 20 days with dozens of witnesses.
The case is a novel one. The August 2023 appellate ruling that revived the previously dismissed complaints from Robson and Safechuck found that companies can owe their own separate duty to protect victims even if they’re “solely owned” by an alleged perpetrator of abuse.
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Jackson’s estate has denied any liability in the now consolidated lawsuit. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, Jackson’s family members claimed Robson and Safechuck had made false claims for financial gain. “It’s about the money,” Marlon Jackson said at the time.
Robson and Safechuck both appeared in HBO’s two-part documentary, Leaving Neverland, where they detailed how Jackson, who died in 2009, allegedly groomed and sexually abused them for years while they were boys.
