Jackson was acquitted on all counts.
Jordan Chandler, the alleged victim in the 1993 child abuse allegations, left the country rather than appear as a witness. ➔ Thomas Mesereau (defense attorney of Michael Jackson): "The prosecutors tried to get [Chandler] to show up and he wouldn't. If he had, I had witnesses who were going to come in and say he told them it never happened and that he would never talk to his parents again for what they made him say."
June Chandler (mother of Jordan Chandler) testified that she had never suspected anything inappropriate between Jackson and Jordan. She told the court that she had not spoken to Jordan in eleven years.
Janet (mother of Gavin Arvizo) admitted to having lied under oath in an earlier lawsuit.
Witnesses for the defense showed Janet had spent $7,000 shopping and dining out at the same time she alleged Jackson kept her and her family captive.
Housekeeper Kiki Fournier testified that the Arvizo children became unruly at Neverland Ranch without authority figures. She said that the Arvizo boys "trashed" their guest rooms, and that at one point Star (brother of Gavin Arvizo) had pointed a knife at her in Jackson's kitchen.
It was stated that the Arvizos had not visited Neverland since March 2003. However, when shown a pornographic magazine dated August 2003, five months after the family stopped visiting Neverland, Star claimed that was one of the magazines Jackson had shown them.
Gavin testified he had told his school administrator that Jackson had not molested him.
Wade Robson testified as Jackson's first defense witness that he had slept in Jackson's bedroom several times but had never been molested.
The former child star Macaulay Culkin testified that he had shared a bed with Jackson on a dozen or more times between the ages of nine and 14, but had never been molested and had never seen Jackson act improperly.
Barnes was aware of the prosecutor's witness testimonies claiming they had seen Jackson touch him inappropriately. In response, Barnes said, "I'm very mad about it. It's not true and they put my name through the dirt. I'm really not happy about it."
Ralph Chacon, a former security guard at Neverland Ranch, testified that he had seen Jackson performing oral sex on Chandler in the early 1990s. A former maid at the ranch, Adrian McManus, testified that she had seen Jackson kissing boys including the actor Macaulay Culkin, and described Jackson touching Culkin's leg and rear. ➔ According to testimony, Chacon and McManus had been found guilty of stealing items from Jackson's house amounting to more than $50,000 and ordered to pay more than $1 million in legal fees. ➔ On cross-examination, the pair affirmed that they had been paid for media interviews. (➔ McManus had previously denied witnessing misconduct from Jackson in a 1993 court deposition while under oath.)
Jurors found the prosecution's case weak and the timeline of accusations problematic because they had claimed the molestation allegedly occurred after the broadcast of the documentary, when the world's attention was on Jackson and Gavin.
Jury foreman Paul Rodriguez compared Jason's to Janet Arvizo's erratic behavior on the stand. He said he "just didn't seem that credible", "left too many little loopholes in his statements" and they had a hard time believing him.
In 2010, the British journalist Charles Thomson described the trial as "one of the most shameful episodes in journalistic history". He said the media coverage was "out of control (...) The sheer amount of propaganda, bias, distortion, and misinformation is almost beyond comprehension."
The Huffington Post contributor Luka Neskovic wrote that the trial "displayed media at their worst", with "sensationalism, exclusivity, negativity, eccentrics, chaos, and hysteria". ➔ Neskovic observed that the media was more interested in reporting the prosecution than the defense, and that, for example, The Hollywood Reporter chose not to report two weeks of the defense case.