US: Prosecutors in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial asked the judge yesterday to admit into evidence two books seized from the pop star's bedroom in 1993 that show pictures of nude boys.
Santa Maria Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville did not immediately rule on the request.
The books were taken during an earlier molestation investigation involving a boy who received a multi-million-dollar settlement from Jackson in 1994. No charges were filed in that case.
The prosecutors' request came as they neared the end of their presentation to jurors. They expect to rest their case on Tuesday and want to introduce the books to support allegations that Jackson has a pattern of molesting boys.
Jackson is accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy, Gavin Arvizo, in 2003, giving him alcohol and conspiring to hold the accuser's family captive to get them to rebut a documentary in which the boy appeared and Jackson said he let children sleep in his bed in a platonic way. He denies all charges.
Prosecutor Ron Zonen said one book was about 90 per cent pictures of nude boys and the other about 10 per cent. One was titled Boys Will Be Boys. Defence lawyer Robert Sanger called the books irrelevant and said they would unfairly prejudice the jury. "It's just plain stale to bring in something from that far back," Sanger said.
He said prosecutors had pored through Jackson's library of thousands of volumes and tried to present jurors "any book that might have a page or two or five or 10 of people who are not fully clothed".
Sanger also noted that one of the books contained an inscription written by Jackson in which he noted the happy expressions on the faces of the boys. "This is the life I never had," the inscription said. This is the life I want for my children."
Yesterday's testimony brought a setback for prosecutors when Jackson's former wife Deborah Rowe, the mother of two of his children, testified that the singer was an easily manipulated victim of "opportunistic vultures" in his inner circle who wanted to make millions from his troubles.
Ms Rowe said she believed a group of men named as Jackson's unindicted co-conspirators were actually conspiring him.
Prosecutors had called Ms Rowe to support their contention that Jackson's alleged co-conspirators scripted a video-taped interview in which she defended him, just as they had allegedly scripted an interview in which the family rebutted the Living With Michael Jackson documentary.
But when Rowe took the stand on Wednesday and Thursday, she said there was no script and that she never looked at a list of questions in advance because she wanted her words to be spontaneous. Asked by Zonen if she knew what she was supposed to say on camera about Jackson, she used such terms as "a wonderful person", "a great father" and "generous and caring".