The judge will not delay the trial

Not long ago, Michael Jackson’s defense attorneys asked the case judge to push the trial date back to allow the lawyers to review the fourteen thousand pages of documents that the prosecution team has collected over the past two months. Among these documents, there is also a list of the names of witnesses in the case. In that list, there are also fake names. The judge rejected the request and stated that the trial would be held on the scheduled date—January 31, 2005, which corresponds to 12 Bahman. Judge Melville said that he feels that delaying the trial is a big step backward: "If I drag the case out for another three months, we’ll also have 90 search warrants and 90 more briefs." Thomas Mesereau, Michael Jackson’s defense attorney, described the interrogations conducted of him as "a personal, filthy, and vindictive act." The prosecutor’s representative called Mesereau’s remarks "recycled nonsense." The prosecution intended to bring up, in this session, the request to summon witnesses from the 1993 case. But nothing was said about it in this session. It has been decided that on January 12, 2005, the request will be addressed in a hearing. Source: AP