Arriving on the heels of, and addressing the ugly controversies ignored by, Antoine Fuqua’s blockbuster biopic Michael, Michael Jackson: The Verdict is a Netflix exposé with impeccable timing—and, unsurprisingly, with lots of nightmarishly unflattering things to say about the King of Pop.
Nick Green’s three-part docuseries (June 3) revisits Jackson’s 2005 criminal trial for child sexual abuse—and, with it, the similar 1993 accusations against him—from a variety of complementary and damning angles, using archival footage and talking-head interviews to provide a comprehensive overview of this early 21st-century scandal.
Ultimately, it boasts little that isn’t already in the public record, and even less serious analysis about what it all means. Yet as a collection of sordid details with few reasonable interpretations, it’s an unsettling portrait of the moonwalking icon’s darker side.
The catalyst for Jackson’s lengthy legal ordeal was Living with Michael Jackson, a 2003 documentary by Martin Bashir in which the singer admitted, on camera, that he often slept beside other young boys at his Neverland Ranch.
“Why can’t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone,” Jackson says in a clip from that infamous program. In Michael Jackson: The Verdict, Bashir states that he was “gobsmacked” by that confession, and it was accompanied by another interview with Gavin Arvizo in which the 12-year-old—who credited Jackson with helping him beat cancer—sat next to Jackson, holding the singer’s hand while putting his head on his shoulder and gazing lovingly up at him.
This was bombshell material, and it predictably detonated Jackson’s reputation, especially given that 10 years prior, a different young boy, Jordan Chandler, had claimed Jackson sexually abused him. LAPD detective Rosibel Ferrufino-Smith explains that, at the time, there was persuasive evidence of Jackson’s culpability—such as Chandler’s accurate description of the star’s genitalia—but before they could formally charge him, the boy opted not to cooperate.
Instead, he and his family settled with Jackson for a whopping $23 million. Though that didn’t prove guilt, it implied that Jackson didn’t want this going any further. Thus, the singer and his team were rocked by Bashir’s doc, and even more so by Gavin’s subsequent allegations that, following the show’s airing, he had been molested by Jackson at Neverland Ranch.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict recounts this saga via sit-downs with numerous subjects, some sympathetic to Jackson (biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli, head of security Kerry Anderson, and attorney Brian Oxman) and others less so (reporter Diane Dimond, family friend Stacy Brown, and prosecutor Ron Zonen). Their contributions, along with TV reports, Sheriff’s footage of the raid of Neverland Ranch, and video of Gavin’s interview with authorities, lend the proceedings an up-close-and-personal immediacy.
Nonetheless, Green’s docuseries is a rather linear affair that’s heavier on rehashing than on revelation, and those familiar with this headline-making chapter will come away with scant new information.
That’s not, however, to say that Michael Jackson: The Verdict is without purpose. Digging deep into this case serves as a much-needed corrective to the Jackson estate-approved Michael, a whitewashed hagiography that deliberately bypassed post-1988 events. In step-by-step fashion, it lays out the district attorney’s office’s charges against Jackson for child sexual abuse and kidnapping (he allegedly kept Gavin’s family trapped at Neverland), as well as Jackson’s defense that this was all a lie orchestrated by Gavin’s con artist mother Janet to get money.
What ensued in and around Santa Barbara County Superior Court in Santa Maria, California was a “circus” involving heated testimony, strange mishaps (like Jackson almost missing Gavin’s testimony because of a late-night “injury”), and throngs of supporters and critics screaming their heads off for the media outlets covering it non-stop.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict strives to take an even-handed approach to its subject, to a somewhat frustrating degree. Defenders and skeptics are granted equal screen time, but director Green never probes their assertions or opinions, nor does he attempt to draw any substantial conclusions about the trial and its eventual not guilty verdict.
At the series’ end, CBS Trial Analyst Trent Copeland pays brief lip service to the intersection of wealth, fame, and power at the heart of this scandal. Nonetheless, there’s no larger inquiry into the obvious forces at play here: how money can buy loyalty, silence and freedom; how celebrity can blind and entice; how people can view the rich and famous as marks; the mechanics of “grooming,” which in this case involved plying kids with booze (i.e. wine in soda cans, which Jackson called “Jesus Juice”); and how victims are treated when pitted against well-known individuals.
As Michael Jackson: The Verdict illustrates, Jackson walked free because the prosecution’s case was undone by unreliable witnesses (namely, Gavin’s mom Janet) and major blunders (like putting Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe on the stand, where she flipped).
Still, its interview with juror Melissa Herard suggests that the real uphill battle was simply convincing admirers that the man behind Thriller could be a monster, particularly when the likes of child actor Macaulay Culkin were willing to take the stand to proclaim him a harmless saint.
Even if Zonen botched things, it’s indisputable that, at best, Jackson engaged in a historic pattern of taking young children who were not his own into his bedroom (behind a locked door), sleeping in bed with them, and showing them pornography. The fact that this, plus accusations from multiple kids that they were groped and raped, wasn’t enough to convince a jury to put Jackson behind bars speaks volumes about who is and is not believed in matters of sexual assault.
Consequently, this non-fiction effort’s biggest shortcoming is that it doesn’t look more deeply into such issues.
Like O.J. Simpson, Jackson was acquitted with the aid of an ace legal team and yet never found exoneration in the court of public opinion. And in the years since this trial—and his untimely death at 50 in 2009—his legacy has taken further hits, most notably via HBO’s 2019 Leaving Neverland, in which James Safechuck and Wade Robeson (who testified on his behalf in 2005) accused him of horrible and sustained abuse.
Despite pandering to both sides, Michael Jackson: The Verdict won’t help burnish Jackson’s tarnished image. It will, however, be an eye-opener for those who believe that Michael was the full story.
