STACY BROWN’S LIES ABOUT 20 victims and 200 million allegedly paid by Michael Jackson

Now that a chance occurrence made us study the rules of discovery and learn reasons why Sneddon didn’t want Jordan Chandler’s description and MJ’s photos in his 1108 “prior bad acts” motion (see this post for details, please) this in its turn made it much easier to disprove another, more recent lie about MJ.

I’m talking about a story about 20 alleged victims who were allegedly paid by MJ $200 million in “hush money” and whose evidence was allegedly barred from the trial due to “discovery rules in a criminal trial”. The story was broken by the Daily Express on April 15, 2015 and from what I hear had a bigger coverage in the press than the previous lie.

What previous lie? Well, the one told by UK tabloids two years ago which was about $35million only and the “victims” whose number varied from 17 to 24 depending on which paragraph of their text you looked at.

PREVIOUS LIE

That lie came in the middle of the AEG trial and right in the time to prejudice the jurors against MJ and make them think that no matter in whose hands he suffered his untimely death he still deserved it due to his fictional offenses against children.

But that lie was rather quickly dismissed because its fabricators made a big mistake of quoting some documents which they tried to pass off as FBI files.

The documents were looked into by various parties including Diane Dimond, and their verdict was unanimous – the story was an obvious fake. Its traces led to a former porn star Barresi who openly said that the matter of Michael Jackson’s guilt or innocence was ‘inconsequential’ to him and his interest was strictly for the money, same as that of his sources – the notorious LeMarques, who used to be chefs at Neverland for a short period of time and who slandered poor Macaulay Culkin inside out.

The story was detailed by a CNN article. Here is a quote from it:

Tabloid report on Michael Jackson ‘FBI files’ questioned

By Alan Duke, CNN

….”None of this is new — zero — and there was no FBI involvement,” said CNN Special Investigations reporter Drew Griffin. “It just sounds like recycled tabloid reports from 20 years ago.”

Griffin saw and reported on the same material more than a decade ago as a local Los Angeles reporter.

“The bottom line is this stuff was not in the FBI files,” said Tom Mesereau. “You can imagine what the prosecutor in Santa Barbara would have done with this information if they really had it.”

Journalist Diane Dimond, who is no defender of the pop icon, also attacked the Sunday People article.

“It is obvious the paper took this old story [about Jordan Chandler] and proceeded to make it seem new by adding numbers to it — 24 boys paid off $35 million by Michael Jackson,” Dimond said. “The problem is there’s no evidence to back up the claim that Jackson made that many payoffs.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/03/showbiz/michael-jackson-files/

Our post https://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/barresi-pellicano-and-michael-jackson-fbi-files-part-2/also looked into each and every document accompanying that fake story and found that the number of 17 alleged victims was mentioned just once and came in an incredibly illiterate paper which was presented as part of a settlement agreement made in 1992 by Michael Jackson’s lawyer Howard Wietzman.

Here is a quote from that beautiful text:

Fake settlement agreement

On this seventh day of July 1992 by and between the Michael Jackson organization, herein referred to as the “organization” and […] herein referred to as “claimaint”,  Witnesses said, in consideration of the mutual covenant and agreements to be kept and performed on the part of set parties hereto, respectively as here and stated said party of the first part, the organization does hereby covenants and agree that it shall, 1) Have…

The fact that the above random choice of words was attributed to lawyer Howard Weitzman is only half the problem. The other half is that in 1992 Howard Wietzman was not working for Michael Jackson at all – he was hired by MJ only a year later, in August 1993.

The above paper is an example of a type of documents that supported the 2013 lie, so no wonder that the story was rather quickly dismissed and forgotten to save the authors from further embarrassment.

However that failure evidently didn’t give Michael’s haters a moment of quiet and two years later, in April this year the attempts were renewed and this time the same old lie was wrapped into a much more sophisticated packing.

NEW LIE

First of all the new version raised the amount of alleged payments to $200 million while the number of “victims” remained the same – 20 (which is the average of 17-24 mentioned earlier).

Secondly, this time the authors did not repeat the same mistake and didn’t refer to any documents and simply hinted at some “sources” calling them “impeccable”.

And you know what? This variant had a much bigger impact on the audience as it gave room to people’s imagination and left them mesmerized with statements like, “A source close to Robson and Safechuck’s legal team” revealed that during the 2005 criminal trial ” the judge ruled much of the prosecution evidence could not be heard” and this was done due to “the difference in discovery rules in criminal and civil cases” and “if Judge Beckloff finds in the pair’s favour, they would be able introduce a wealth of evidence excluded in 2005.”

This version was published by the Daily Express in April 2015 and was followed by Taj Jackson’s complaint about the inaccuracy of the story (what a mild word to describe it) to the British press regulator called the Independent Press Standards Organization.

The outcome of the complaint was no surprise and is usual for anything connected with Michael Jackson – it was rejected. The press regulator said that the Daily Mirror was entitled to report the claims the way they were originally presented in the US, and this is how we learn that the fake was first published in the US media and only then was readily repeated in the UK.

The IPSO reply was formal, superficial and ridiculous. After almost half a year of looking into the matter it was made only recently, on October 8, 2015 and this is what it said:

IPSO rejects complaint from Michael Jackson’s nephew over ‘£134m hush money’ claim

Dominic Ponsford

08 October 2015

Michael Jackson’s nephew has had an accuracy complaint against the Daily Mirror over a story headlined “Jacko’s £134m hush money” rejected by press regulator IPSO.

The story reported that two men allegedly abused as children by Jackson were seeking to bring new civil cases against the late singer’s estate in which they would introduce “damning evidence”.

It included claims that Jackson had paid “up to £134m” to silence his alleged victims. It also included a comment made by Jackson’s sister LaToya in 1993 saying she did not want to be “silent collaborator in my brother’s crimes”.

Taj Jackson complained to IPSO that the story was inaccurate.

He said the story did not provide a source for its claims and that the quotes from LaToya were later retracted by her. He also said the Jackson estate was not approached for a comment.

The Mirror said the information about “hush money” had been widely reported. Before republishing, its journalist contacted an American journalist who originally reported the information.

The US journalists declined to reveal sources but said they were “impeccable”.

The Mirror said its reporter attempted to contact a representative of the Jackson estate by telephone and had not received a response.

The Mirror offered to change “damning evidence”, to “potentially damning evidence”, and to say that LaToya Jackson has since retracted her comments in the online version of the article. It also offered to publish a clarification and follow-up article setting out the Jackson family’s position.

IPSO said the Mirror was entitled to report the claims, provided that they were clearly presented as such.  http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/ipso-rejects-complaint-michael-jacksons-nephew-over-%C2%A3134m-hush-money-claim

The above essentially means that if some paper claims something with no proof to support it and without revealing its sources and just says that it is right, others in the media can repeat it without any double-checking.

What a fine decision on the part of a British press regulator! If only they knew what a disservice they are doing to the image of their press as a whole and what fantastic arguments for laugh, ridicule and repetition they are giving to some even less scrupulous media in other parts of the world.

No wonder that Taj Jackson’ was shocked and disappointed by this decision:

Charles Thomson also had an opinion about the IPSO ruling, and it is from his comment that we learn that the one who was supposed to be the “impeccable” source for the Daily Express was no other but the old familiar liar Stacy Brown who had his story published in the New York Post:

This ruling is lunacy. It finds that a newspaper is ‘entitled’ to publish a story for which it can find no supporting evidence, on the basis that it has been copied from somewhere else. That is farcical.

The Mirror copied this story from a report in the New York Post, by a journalist called Stacy Brown. Brown has published numerous stories about the Jackson family which have subsequently proved untrue, including a claim that Tito Jackson had fathered a secret lovechild, and a claim that Taj Jackson – who submitted this complaint – had been molested by Michael Jackson. Brown has been fired from at least one newspaper for unethical conduct (there are contemporaneous news reports about the sacking online).

In Jackson’s 2005 trial, a former associate was called as a prosecution witness because of claims published under his name in a book, which said he supposedly witnessed abuse. He testified that in fact he did not recall ever seeing what was described, or telling his ghost writer – Stacy Brown – that he had seen any of the things attributed to him. He said he did not know the comments were even in the book and that he believed Brown had fabricated them to entice publishers.

At around the same time, Brown convinced Jermaine Jackson to co-write a book with him – but Jermaine severed ties after he accused Brown of writing a false book proposal, containing a raft of lurid allegations against his brother, and then leaking it to generate publicity.

The above examples are but a fraction of Stacy Brown’s canon of dubious coverage of the Jackson family. But despite the total unreliability of the Mirror’s source and despite its complete inability to discover a single piece of supporting evidence, IPSO ruled that the Mirror was ‘entitled’ to repeat Brown’s story.

That is shocking and indefensible. And it is the second indefensible ruling by IPSO in the space of a month – the last one being its judgement that a story about a conversation between Tony Blair and John Bercow was legitimate, even though both Blair and Bercow, the only participants in the conversation, said the story was fabricated.

This ruling is a nonsense. It makes a mockery of the code of practice, it makes a mockery of journalism and it calls the ability of IPSO to effectively and fairly regulate the press into serious question.”

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/ipso-rejects-complaint-michael-jacksons-nephew-over-%C2%A3134m-hush-money-claim

Okay, so now we at least know that it is useless to approach the officials in search for justice for Michael Jackson, and the job of establishing the truth will have to be done by us.

I myself wanted to be absolutely sure that we were not missing anything and Stacy Brown’s story was indeed a 100% lie with no grain of truth to it, so had to look through an enormous pile of court documents that could have any mention of those “victims” and “settlements” or anything that could have any bearing on this matter.

The result was zero proof of Stacy Brown’s story – zero, zilch, zip, nada, nothing as Sneddon like saying it – but since we are not the New York Post or even IPSO and just saying it would be absolutely not enough for us, here is my first report in support of that conclusion.

THE MESMERIZING EFFECT OF LEGAL LANGUAGE

The first thing to do was to single out those points in Stacy Brown’s lie that could look credible to people due to their “legal” language and references to procedural technicalities which usually have a mesmerizing effect on the general public.

For example, the talk about differences in discovery rules in civil and criminal proceedings usually hypnotizes readers into believing that there must have been “something there” that prevented the prosecution from introducing their most damning evidence against Michael Jackson.

Creating this impression is a well-known tool of deceit and the New York Post article is abundant in such statements:

If they’re successful, Robson, 32, and Safechuck, 36, would have an advantage over previous cases. Thanks to discovery rules in civil cases, the duo would be able to introduce a wealth of evidence excluded from criminal proceedings — including, for the first time, how much Jackson paid alleged victims and their families.

The duo will be allowed to detail past, undisclosed settlements between Jacko and boys. Sources contend there were at least 20 young victims, who reaped — with their parents and attorneys — upward of $200 million cumulatively in hush money.

The Chandler lawsuit alone cost Jacko more than $40 million, sources said.

In the criminal case against Jacko, a detective for the Santa Barbara district attorney told The Post that the judge, behind closed doors, refused to allow prosecutors to reveal the cash Jacko was paying out. “The judge said it would be too highly prejudicial,” the source recalled.

By now we are rather well versed on the subject of “discovery rules” and are able to separate blatant lies from half-fiction:

1. All figures cited above are a blatant lie.
2. The reference to the rules of discovery in civil cases is half a lie as they indeed allow a wider scope of discovery but it doesn’t apply to Michael Jackson’s case as nothing could be wider in scope than the introduction of his past civil settlement agreements and lots of hearsay from some third-parties from 13 years prior to that.
3. And the story about the decision made behind “closed doors” is simply the twisted truth. The hearing indeed took place out of the presence of the jury, only it doesn’t mean anything as all rulings on motions from both sides were made by the judge out of the presence of the jury. However the hearing was still in open court and we can perfectly see what they were discussing as all respective court transcripts are available and we don’t need some “detective” to tell us about it as if it were some horrible secret.

On March 28, 2005 the judge ruled that two settlement agreements (with Jordan Chandler and Jason Francia) could be admitted without disclosing the amounts of the settlements though,  however this wasn’t so big a setback for the prosecution – the jurors perfectly knew the sums from media reports anyway, and the only thing the prosecution wasn’t allowed to do was discussing those amounts in a courtroom.

In fact,  looking at that decision from a distance of 10 years one can even say that the limitation on the amounts set by the judge was more to Michael Jackson’s detriment than to his benefit, because in Chandler’s case, for example, the media was speculating about much bigger sums and it could have been even better if the jurors had known the true figures and not the highly inflated ones reported by the media.

Even today Stacy Brown is lying about the amount of that Chandler settlement and says that it was $40 million which is double the true amount. The real sum was revealed to the public by the Smoking gun when they published the text of that agreement in June 2004. The text said that it was $15,3 million and the Smoking Gun added to it the $3 million fee of Chandler’s lawyer (from his retainer agreement) and Diane Dimond later added to it a couple of millions for the parents which all in all made $20 million or so – which is big enough sum, but still not 40!

To refresh your memory about the information that was in possession of the public and jury at the time of the trial here is an excerpt from the Smoking gun report made in June 2004:

JUNE 16–Michael Jackson agreed to pay $15.3 million to settle child molestation charges leveled against him in 1993 by a California boy, according to a confidential legal agreement. A heavily redacted version of the 31-page document, a copy of which you’ll find below, was obtained by Court TV’s Diane Dimond [22 pages].

The January 1994 agreement contains a one-line reference to Jackson delivering “confessions of judgment” totaling $15,331,250 to the boy’s attorneys. However, since the entire eight-page section of the agreement titled “Settlement Payment” is not included in the document, it is unclear how the eight-figure payout was distributed to the boy or what his parents were paid. However, a reference to the establishment of a “qualified funding asset” would indicate that an annuity (likely tax free) was a central part of the settlement.

The unredacted portions of the agreement do not address payment of the accuser’s legal fees, though a September 1993 retainer agreement between the family and attorney Larry Feldman called for the family to pay their counsel’s fee. According to the retainer, Feldman stood to earn $3 million on a $15 million settlement. Any recovery above that figure earned Feldman’s firm an additional ten percent.

A redacted version of the settlement agreement was prepared in connection with a May 1996 lawsuit brought against Jackson by the child’s father, who claimed that the singer breached terms of the 1994 legal agreement during a June 1995 interview on ABC’s “Primetime Live.”   http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/celebrity/michael-jacksons-15-million-payoff

The text of the agreement: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/michael-jacksons-15-million-payoff

The amount of the settlement with Jason Francia was also disclosed by the prosecution – they did it in their 1108 “prior bad acts” motion which was most probably also leaked to the press. The sum was announced there, only in a somewhat unusual way – though the prosecutors obviously had access to all Jason Francia’s documents they still said that they and Jason just believed that the settlement was for about $2 million dollars.

The prosecution motion said:

“Jason’s lawyers settled a claim on his behalf against Michael Jackson for what he believes to be about two million dollars.”

The defense were very surprised by the way the prosecution worded it and replied in their opposition paper:

“In Plaintiff’s Motion to Admit Prior Sexual Offenses dated December 10, 2004, they argue that Mr. Jackson entered into a civil settlement with lawyers for Jason Francia for a “believed” $2 million dollars.”

Whichever way it was, the amounts were known to the public, so the judge’s decision not to disclose the sums didn’t change the situation that much.

You will ask why the defense didn’t want the sums to be disclosed if it didn’t make that much difference?  The reason the defense cited is that if the amount was mentioned and the defense didn’t have a chance to cross-examine those who settled and ask them why they did, it would leave the jury prejudiced and the matter would be approached from one side only.

So the short of the idea was “either introduce the sum and allow us to cross-examine the person or do not mention the sum at all”.

As to Jordan Chandler this was impossible – he refused to testify for the prosecution point blank and somewhat mysteriously explained that “he had done his part”. However Jason Francia was available to the prosecution, both with his tickling story and a settlement agreement behind his back.

And he was asked questions about that settlement by the defense, only the way Jason answered Thomas Mesereau was really baffling and left you with the impression of a strange game he and the prosecution were playing there.

When Thomas Mesereau asked Jason pointed questions about his settlement agreement Jason suddenly pretended that he only heard of it, never discussed it with his mother and never saw that document himself. Thomas Mesereau tried to find out if he was asked to sign the agreement, to which the answer was “probably” and that he “didn’t know if he signed it”.

19 Q. At some point you and your mother settled a

20 case with Mr. Jackson, correct?

21 A. I don’t remember signing papers.

22 Q. You’re how old today?

23 A. I’m 24.

24 Q. And you’re telling the jury you don’t know

25 whether you and your mother ever reached a financial

26 settlement with Mr. Jackson?

27 A. There was a financial settlement.

28 Q. Okay. And when did you learn about that?

1 A. I believe I was 17.

2 Q. Do you remember signing documents in that?

3 A. At 17, I don’t remember.

4 Q. Okay. Do you remember looking at that

5 agreement?

6 A. At 17, I did not look at that agreement.

[…] 7 Q. You’ve never discussed it with your mom?

8 A. About — I have never discussed what, the

9 settlement?

10 Q. Yes.

11 A. Yes, I have.

12 Q. Have you ever discussed how the settlement

13 came about with your mom?

14 A. No.

15 Q. Okay. Okay. And do you remember reading a

16 settlement document?

17 MR. ZONEN: Objection; asked and answered.

18 THE COURT: Sustained.

19 Q. BY MR. MESEREAU: You were asked to sign a

20 settlement document at some point, right?

21 A. Probably.

22 Q. And in that document, Mr. Jackson denied

23 doing anything wrong, correct?

24 MR. ZONEN: Objection; assumes facts not in

25 evidence.

26 THE COURT: Sustained.

27 Q. BY MR. MESEREAU: Do you know whether or not

28 in that settlement document you signed Mr. Jackson

1 denies ever doing anything wrong?

2 MR. ZONEN: Objection. No evidence he

3 signed it, he viewed a document or signed a

4 document.

5 THE COURT: The objection is sustained. He

6 said — when you asked him if he signed it, he said,

7 “Probably.” So you haven’t established that he

8 signed it.

9 MR. MESEREAU: Okay.

10 Q. At the age of 24, and as you sit here today,

11 you don’t know if you ever signed a settlement

12 document with Mr. Jackson?

13 A. That is correct.

14 Q. As you sit here today, at the age of 24, do

15 you know if your mother ever signed a settlement

16 document with Mr. Jackson?

17 A. I think she did.

18 Q. Do you know if any money has come your way

19 through a settlement with Mr. Jackson?

20 A. Money has, yes.

21 Q. Okay. And when did you first learn about

22 that?

23 A. I answered that I thought. At 17.

24 Q. Okay. And you’ve had many discussions with

25 your mom about that, right?

26 A. No. We — me and my mom have a weird

27 relationship. Well, not a weird relationship. We

28 just don’t talk about much stuff.

It is clear that it was Jason Francia and not the defense who didn’t want to discuss that settlement in court.

And this in its turn explains why the prosecution wanted to introduce as evidence only the sums and not whole agreements – they didn’t want to reveal that the texts of the agreements excluded any guilt on the part of MJ and were made to protect Michael’s name from further trashing in the media, and their terms said that the agreements were confidential “except as may be required by law” (see Jordan Chandler’s agreement for that).

And law was represented by Sneddon who could perfectly well have access to any settlement agreements signed by Michael Jackson, and there was absolutely no need for him to pretend that he hadn’t seen Jason Francia’s settlement document and therefore only “believed” what its amount was.

The reason for this game seems to be indeed in the discovery rules – only in their reverse interpretation from the one given by Stacy Brown. If the prosecution was introducing the settlements as their discovery, those papers became subject for cross-examination in court (with limitations over the sums set by the judge), and this is exactly what the prosecution wanted to avoid and this is why – when they were finally admitted – Jason was obviously instructed “not to remember anything” about his settlement.

Let us make a note of the surprising factor that it was the prosecution and not the defense who were playing games with those settlement agreements.

THE HEARING AND A VERY SPECIAL NOTICE

The civil settlement agreements and the names of witnesses and third parties whose testimony would be introduced at trial were discussed on March 28, 2005, in the middle of the Arvizo case. The hearing was outside the presence of the jury (“behind closed doors” as Stacy Brown put it) but still in open court – so all its details are available to us here, in the respective transcript.

The hearing was about the 1108 “prior bad acts” paper filed by the prosecution as early as December 10, 2004 and was the only time when this matter was discussed in the presence of the judge and when he finally made his ruling.

Between the motion and the ruling there was a several months gap. The December motion was followed by an intensive exchange of papers from both sides in opposition or support of the motion, but this exchange came to a stop on January 28, 2005 when the judge informed the parties that he would not rule on the prior bad acts issue until he heard the case-in-chief (the Arvizo case) and this is how this big gap ensued.

The choice of the hearing date was not a chance one. The Arvizo brothers had just  testified and their testimony didn’t produce the impression the prosecutors were counting on, so realizing that their case was falling apart the prosecutors filed a notice to court requesting an urgent hearing on their 1108 “prior bad acts” motion and this is how it came to be discussed on March 28, 2005.

This notice is dated March 16, 2005 and it asks for the matter to be heard “as soon as possible”:

Please take notice that, consistently with the Court’s calendar but as soon as possible after the completion of the testimony of witnesses presently scheduled to testify on Tuesday, March 22, 2005, Plaintiff requests hearing on its motion (notice of which was filed December 10, 2004) for the Court’s order authorizing Plaintiff to put before the trial jury evidence of defendant’s prior sexual offenses and certain related conduct pursuant to Evidence Code sections 1108, subdivision (a) and 1101, subdivision (b).

Two of the witnesses listed in the pending motion (i.e. Orieta Murdoc and Mariano “Mark” Quindoy) will not be called.

Dated: March 16, 2005

Respectfully submitted,

THOMAS W.SNEDDON, JR.

Yes, you understood it right.

Prior to that crucial hearing Sneddon himself withdrew two of his main witnesses Orietta Murdock and Mariano “Mark” Quindoy whose names and detailed statements were introduced in the original motion.

As regards Mariano Quindoy Diane Dimond said that he died without having a chance to testify, but Orietta Murdock was still much alive, but despite that her testimony was still withdrawn by Sneddon.

Just imagine it, he simply stated that “he would not be calling” her as if it were a mere nothing, but up till now we have to deal with her lies which contaminate the internet all over, though the stories told were evidently so untrue that the prosecutor refused to call the witness himself.

And Michael’s haters are still holding dear to Orietta Murdock’s revelations as if it were the bible!

And no one knows about it because the lies were told in every possible detail and in a well-publicised 1108 motion, while their withdrawal came in a tiny notice made several months later and in a paper no one ever heard of.

BY THE WAY, IS MARIANO QUINDOY REALLY DEAD?

By the way, in an attempt to find the exact date of Mariano Quindoy’s death I searched several US public records websites. The Genealogybank.com site found 14 records in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) but surprisingly, none of them were for Mariano L. Quindoy (see the result here, please).

The site called Sortedbyname.com provided me with the same list of deceased Quindoys, but Mariano Quindoy was not among them either.  And the same result was obtained from the Familysearch.org website.

On the other hand websites like Instantcheckmate.com informed me that Mariano L. Quindoy is 85 years old and has a spouse named Ofelia Quindoy, 81 years old.

The locations associated with these people are three properties in California (Glendale, Tustin and Alamo) and one in Dallas ((Texas).

Other sites provided the same information. For example, here is the search result from publicrecords.com for Mariano L.Quindoy,  and here is one for  Ofelia Quindoy.

Since I didn’t go any further as the next steps required payment for the public records services, I cannot seriously claim that Mariano Quindoy is actually alive and is living in Glendale in California as some public records suggest it.

However I do not rule out this possibility considering that all sites say that he is already 85 years old and his name is absolutely not on any death records based on the Social Security Death Index data (or did he live without any social security?)

The matter is intriguing as it may undermine the stories of too many people, so I will be very grateful to anyone who goes further in this enquiry and settles the matter once and for all by answering a simple question: Is Mariano “Mark” Quindoy dead or alive?

If he is, then the maneuver with introducing his and Orietta Murdock’s statements and then refusing to call them could be a special type of malicious prosecution technology – first they publicize false statements from 10 witnesses, and then withdraw the most fabricated ones allowing these lies to live a life of their own. From the procedural point of view everything is legitimate, but essentially it is an intentional killing of Michael’s reputation and intentional smearing of his name.

This is why it is so extremely important to find out if Mariano Quindoy is still alive and enjoying life. And I will be sincerely happy if he is.

THE JUDGE RULES ON SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS

In the meantime we need to focus on the settlement agreements story told to us by another liar – Stacy Brown. You remember that he claims that there were “20 victims” and “200 million” in settlements allegedly barred by the judge at that “closed-door” session, so it is time to look up the transcript of the hearing to see if there is any proof for the story.

Well, of course there is none. The transcript of the hearing shows that there were only two settlements and not twenty as Stacy Brown implies. The judge ruled first on the one and then on the other, thus making it clear that they were the only civil settlements the prosecution ever wanted to raise and deal with.

Here is an excerpt from the judge’s ruling:

2   All right.  Now, the next item I want to

3   take up is the settlement issues of whether or not

4   the settlements are admissible.  In the one case,

5   the Chandler case, I’m going to rule that the

6   evidence that there was a settlement may come in,

7   the amount may not.

8   The second issue on the other child, I’m not

9   sure — Mr. Sneddon, in your papers, you related to

10   that.  In your points and authorities, you related

 11   to a claim that was settled.  Was there a lawsuit or

12   not a lawsuit in that case?

13   MR. SNEDDON:  There was not a lawsuit.  It

14   was settled prior to the commencement of — it was

15   settled in lieu of filing of a civil complaint.

16   THE COURT:  It was settled under threat of

17   lawsuit type of settlement.

18   MR. SNEDDON:  That’s my understanding from

19   talking to the lawyer, yes, sir.  Lawyers.

20   THE COURT:  Well, again, the amount won’t be

21   admissible except — I say that it’s not admissible

22   by the prosecution to prove anything.  The defense,

23   if they want to raise the amount to prove

24   something — it’s not the same side — it’s not two

25   different sides of the same coin.  It’s in the

26   Court’s opinion, the amount doesn’t prove anything.

27   The settlement leaves inferences.  For the defense,

28   though, the amount may prove something if they

1   choose to use it.  So I’m making a ruling that

2   applies one way to this side and the other way to

3   this side.  That doesn’t mean you have to, it just

4   means I’m not taking that away from you.  I’m taking

5   it away from them.

6   Now, having said what my intended ruling is,

7   if anyone wants to address that, you may.

8   MR. MESEREAU:  I think we’re going to submit

9   at this point, Your Honor.

10 THE COURT:  All right.  Thank you.

23  If we have nothing else, then we’ll recess

24   until 11:30 when the jurors will be here.

http://www.reflectionsonthedance.com/03-28-05_FINAL__1108_Lopezes_Spinner_.txt

So there were no “20 victims” and no “200 million”. The settlement agreements were only two and both agreements were allowed by the judge as evidence at the trial, with the limitations set only for the sums.

And the ruling was made in open court and not kept away from the public. As to the sums the jurors were free to believe even the worst of the media speculations, so from this point of view it would have been even better if the judge had disclosed the real amounts.

Now the last thing we need to check up is whether those two settlements were the only ones the prosecution had in mind and make sure that there was nothing else in Sneddon’s pocket. To do that we are facing a great prospect of going over with a fine-tooth comb through all prosecution motions which could have any bearing on this problem.

Now I understand why Stacy Brown thought that it was completely safe to lie about 20victims and 200M – he couldn’t imagine that anyone would undertake that amount of work and check up each and every prosecution motion possibly connected with it.

However I took the trouble to look and can now say it with a clear conscience that there isn’t a single shred of evidence to prove Stacy Brown’s story. And though the search brought a zero result, the study was still not in vain as it put every little detail in its right place and created a much more complete and clear picture of what all these people were doing to Michael Jackson.