SANTA MARIA, Calif. – Michael Jackson will have to stew all weekend – and possibly longer – as jurors in his molestation trial went home Friday after six days with no verdict.
Tension was mounting slowly outside the courthouse, where about 200 fans and at least five times as many reporters awaited a decision from the jurors cloistered inside.
Court TV’s Diane Dimond – a particular target of the Jackson fans, who say she is a prosecution shill – sought and received a restraining order for the loudest of her critics, an 18-year-old from Tennessee named Bobby Joe Hickman.
Known to both reporters and Jackson fans as “BJ,” Hickman dropped out of high school in Knoxville to spend the last three months in Santa Maria, Calif., where he has been screaming “liar,” “she-devil” and other names at Dimond.
“He incites others to threaten me harm,” she told a judge. “I believe he wants people to attack me.”
In keeping with the bizarre nature of the Jackson trial, Hickman showed up yesterday with both a lawyer and a spokeswoman and was instantly engulfed in a sea of jostling TV camera crews.
Fans carried “Leave BJ Alone” signs.
“He’s a genuine fan, and he’s being told he can’t be a fan,” said the lawyer, Gerry Camacho, who said he took on the case for free because “I’m an American and I believe in free speech.”
But police, worried that if Jackson is convicted his fans may take out their anger on the press, finally took steps to keep the fans and media in separate areas.
Not all the demonstrators outside the courthouse were pro-Jackson.
Diane Hansen, 37, of Redondo Beach, Calif., staged a dramatic reading of the anti-molestation children’s book she’s self-published called “Those Are MY Private Parts.”
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AP-NY-06-10-05 2257EDT
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