‘Michael Jackson: The Verdict’: 6 takeaways from the documentary

More than 20 years after Michael Jackson was acquitted on charges of child molestation — and two months since the global superstar’s record-breaking biopic skirted any mention of abuse allegations — a new Netflix docuseries brings his trial and the aftermath to the foreground.

“Michael Jackson: The Verdict,” a three-part documentary directed by Nick Green and released Wednesday, chronicles his 2005 trial in Santa Maria that began with a search raid of the pop star’s sprawling Neverland Ranch and ended with a jury finding him not guilty on 10 counts, including four counts of child molestation. At the center of the case was Gavin Arvizo, a then-15-year-old cancer survivor from Los Angeles.

Because recording was not allowed in the courtroom, the documentary relies heavily on archival footage from media surrounding the trial and firsthand accounts of key figures involved, including prosecutor Ron Zonen, Jackson family attorney Brian Oxman, journalist Diane Dimond, two trial jurors, and friends and supporters on both sides of the case.

The episodes also delve into the 2003 documentary “Living With Michael Jackson,” in which the pop star is interviewed by British journalist Martin Bashir, that sparked questions about his behavior, leading to the charges against Jackson. Jackson’s historically questionable relationships with children, the media circus surrounding the trial and the effect it had on fans, the family at its center and Jackson himself are explored, too.

Here are six key takeaways from “The Verdict.”

Jackson allegedly had his personal assistant order child pornography

One of the docuseries’ most revealing interviews came from Vincent Amen, a former Jackson associate who worked at Neverland Ranch from 2002 to 2003. He said he was put in charge of taking care of the Arvizo family during their stay at the property following media backlash from Gavin Arvizo’s appearance in “Living With Michael Jackson.”

At that time, Amen said, he “wholeheartedly” believed in Jackson’s innocence, especially because Jackson’s friend Frank Tyson, also known as Frank Cascio, a member of the family who filed a lawsuit against Jackson’s estate in April detailing alleged sexual abuse, vouched so strongly for him. Cascio, who met Jackson when he was 5 years old and later became his personal assistant, told Amen, “Michael would never do this with a child.”

Amen’s conviction shifted, however, after he discovered a disturbing magazine that apparently belonged to Jackson in Cascio’s possession.

“Frank cleaned out his house of anything that came from the Neverland Ranch. And he hands me a Nike bag,” Amen said in the docuseries. “I took the bag and I’m driving home, and I felt, ‘Something’s a little suspicious.’ And I said, ‘Let me take a look in this bag.’ I start taking videos to document this. I open the bag. I start looking, and I see a magazine.”

The series shows shaky footage of Vincent apparently finding a nudist magazine called “Naturally.” He flips to a video ordering section with titles circled in black marker, including videos called “Nudist Youth Weekend” and “Euro-Nudist Family.”

“I confronted Frank, I said, ‘Frank, what is this magazine? Because, you know, there’s circles around videos with naked children,’” Amen recounted. “He said, ‘That’s just a phase that Michael and I went through. He circled the videos that he wanted, I ordered them, and it was a phase that we went through.’ They watched them together.”

The Arvizo children called Jackson ‘daddy’ and had their own bizarre nicknames

Along with footage of the nudist magazine, Amen held on to other evidence of his time with Jackson and the Arvizo family, including a set of Polaroid pictures featuring Gavin’s mom, Janet, and younger brother, Star.

In one, Star points directly into the lens. It’s captioned, “You my daddy Michael.” Another photo of a smiling Janet and Star includes a handwritten caption from Janet that says, “Dearest loving Michael, we appreciate you being our family. What God brings together, no man can undo. We love you.”

Under a photo of Star with a cross-eyed expression, he wrote, “I love you, my daddy Michael. Your son, Blowhole.”

“These are the nicknames that Michael would give these young boys,” Amen said.

Bashir documentary marked a pivotal shift in the perception of Jackson

Though the first allegations of child molestation against Michael Jackson emerged in 1993, it was footage from Bashir’s “Living With Michael Jackson” that ignited public concern about Jackson’s relationship with Gavin.

In a pivotal scene from the 2003 documentary, Jackson brings Gavin in as an example of a child with cancer that he helped. Gavin, 13 at the time, leans his head on Jackson’s shoulder and holds his hand. Jackson tells Bashir that the two often share a bed at the Neverland Ranch, though in another scene he stresses that it’s not sexual.

“I realized that we had something that was hugely significant, but I didn’t realize the extent of the bombshell until the broadcast,” Bashir recalled in “The Verdict.”

“You can see it. You can look at that moment in the Martin Bashir documentary and you can actually pin the end of his life to that very moment,” J. Randy Taraborrelli, Jackson’s childhood friend and biographer, said in the docuseries.

Given Jackson’s stardom, news and tabloid media swarmed the scene of the trial along with droves of dedicated fans (and a much smaller contingent of detractors). And the archival footage from “The Verdict” shows the extent to which fandom and media frenzy influenced the proceedings.

Jackson’s fans stationed themselves throughout the route he’d take to the Santa Maria courthouse with signs showing their support, sometimes standing and shouting and other times driving alongside him and honking. Jackson had his director of security, Kerry Anderson, film these drives while he waved and engaged with supporters.

As many as 1,000 fans showed up on the first day of the trial, and many would line up starting at 5 a.m. for raffle tickets that would allow them to enter the courtroom. One fan interviewed for the docuseries, Sheree Wilkins, said she quit her job as a preschool teacher to move to Santa Maria for the trial. When the “not guilty” verdicts were announced, she fainted and had to receive medical attention.

TV news stations from around the world, including Taiwan, Japan and Mexico, sent crews to cover the trial.

Even inside the courtroom, where cameras were not allowed, enthusiasm for Jackson’s music could not be contained. Attendees recalled everybody, from the jury to the judge and even the prosecution, “swaying in their seats” when songs played as part of an evidence display.

“I remember me moving in time to his music,” prosecutor Ron Zonen said. “At one point Tom [Sneddon, the District Attorney leading the prosecution] jabbed me and said, ‘Would you stop moving your foot?’ ”

Jackson’s mental and physical health deteriorated

Mark Geragos briefly served as Jackson’s defense attorney.

(Netflix)

According to numerous interviews in “The Verdict,” Jackson’s substance use was problematic before and during the trial.

Jackson was not at Neverland during the raid that predated his charges. According to journalist Dimond, her sources said he was in Las Vegas “having wild parties.”

“There were cigarette burns in the leather couches and chairs. There were empty liquor bottles on every table. And this is where Michael Jackson had been for several days, entertaining young teenage boys, who all spoke German,” she said.

Later, Jackson’s well-publicized physical pain became the catalyst for controversy when he was hospitalized overnight, where he was allegedly given enough pain medication “to tranquilize an elephant,” and failed to show up on time for court the next day. The judge threatened to issue a warrant for his arrest if he didn’t make it to the courthouse within the hour, leading Jackson’s team to speed there at 90 mph.

Throughout the trial, stress took an enormous toll on Jackson, defense attorney Mark Geragos said in the docuseries.

“I watched him just disintegrate, literally disintegrate. The ingestion of substances was just astronomical. There was a time when I actually saw him in the fetal position on the floor, and I thought, ‘What do we do?’ I mean, you don’t want his death to be on your hands because you took some inaction,” he said. “We had genuine concerns whether he could even withstand a trial — physically, mentally.”

The prosecution’s case fell apart at the hands of key witnesses

“The Verdict” lays out, step by step, how the trial ended in Jackson’s full acquittal. One major contributor, the docuseries seems to argue, is the downfall of the prosecution at the hands of its own witnesses.

Defense attorney Tom Mesereau was an expert at discrediting witnesses, subjects told the filmmakers, but certain key witnesses, like Janet Arvizo, struggled to connect with the jury on their own.

“I called her Janet from another planet,” admitted juror Melissa Herard. “Sorry, but that’s just how she acted.”

Jackson’s ex-wife Debbie Rowe was meant to take the stand as a smoking gun for the prosecution but instead revealed no new information and came to Jackson’s defense.

The prosecution also partially hinged its case on past allegations of child sexual abuse against Jackson, but conflicting testimony caused these efforts to backfire. A former Neverland employee claimed to witness Jackson molest Wade Robson when he was a child, but Robson took the stand and denied anything happened.

“It’s hard to convince a jury when the subject of the act itself said it didn’t happen,” Zonen said.

In 2013, Robson reversed his stance and filed a lawsuit against the Jackson estate alleging sexual abuse. His allegations, along with those of James Safechuck, were the subject of the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland.”