US: Fifteen months since his arrest, and a month after the court case against him officially began, the serious business of the People of California versus Michael Joseph Jackson finally gets under way today in Santa Maria.
The prosecution and defence will make their opening statements before the prosecution calls its first witness, who is expected to be the television journalist Martin Bashir.
A two-minute clip from Bashir's documentary, Living with Michael Jackson, is expected to form part of the prosecution's opening statement. The charges, to which Jackson has pleaded not guilty, are of molestation of a 13-year-old boy, of giving the boy alcohol and of conspiring to keep him and his family from leaving his Neverland ranch.
Last week the judge ruled that the defence could introduce evidence that the accuser's mother had made abuse charges in the past. But he ruled against a request to introduce evidence relating to the mother's use of psychiatric medication and excluded any reference to her extramarital conduct.