Michael Jackson: Walking Free

Today, the man who was on the verge of becoming the word's most famous felon can now begin the rehabilitation of his career.

It was a thundering victory for Jackson's defense attorney, Tom Mesereau. And it was a colossal humiliation for Santa Barbara District Attorney Tom Sneddon. The jury took five and a half days to finally reach its unanimous decision.

The verdict finally caps a trial few actually saw but no one will forget. It's a trial, as Correspondent Susan Spencer reports, that flirted with the surreal and remained unpredictable from the start.

Back in November of 2003, Sneddon was a very confident man, having just participated in the arrest of Michael Jackson on child molestation charges.

After all, Sneddon had what looked like a sympathetic accuser – a teenage cancer survivor who had appeared with the singer in a British documentary, where Jackson bragged about having the child in his bed.

The young accuser's credibility was the very heart of the case. "He was the only one to directly testified to the acts of the molestation," says former Santa Barbara prosecutor Craig Smith.

But as Smith points out, the boy was hardly an ideal witness: "The accuser was not as certain. Not as positive. Not as unwavering…. He was very vague about it."

"I thought Tom Mesereau did a masterful job of dismantling his testimony," says defense attorney Jen Keller, a close friend and confidante of Mesereau. She says the defense annihilated the child's credibility in cross-examination, peppering the boy about his previous denials that any abuse had occurred.

"You don't like to go after young people on cross examination unless you have to. But Tom Mesereau had to," says Keller. "He was the heart of the case. If he discredited his testimony, the case was over."But Mesereau had another huge obstacle to overcome – a ruling that prosecutors could tell the jury about previous claims of molestation and could call other alleged victims to the stand.

"Once those other allegations are admitted you're now talking about multiple trials within a trial," says Keller. "So it exponentially increases the difficulty."

Jackson settled an infamous civil suit in 1994 for some $20 million. The mother of the accuser in that case took the stand to describe her family's pain. "Her testimony was probably among the most powerful the jury heard," says Smith.

Also powerful was testimony from the son of Jackson's former maid, who settled another suit for $2 million. He described how Jackson had groped him.

"He was very good," says Smith. "He was certain. He was positive. And he was unwavering in his testimony about what Michael Jackson had done to him."

But Mesereau painted the prosecution's witnesses as lying opportunists looking either to sue or sell their stories. And he brought in just as many other "special friends" who said Jackson never made any sexual moves on them -- witnesses like actor Macaulay Culkin.

"He [Culkin] got up and talked about how Jackson had contacted him when he was a child star and he was feeling alone and isolated," says Keller.

"Courtships usually culminate in something," adds Keller. "This culminated in a lifelong friendship."

Legal analysts also agree Mesereau also got plenty of help from the prosecutors' initial decision to pursue a charge of conspiracy.

"The prosecution was its own worst enemy in bringing the conspiracy charge," says Smith.

"Absolutely horrible, fatal mistake for the prosecutor," adds Keller.

Prosecutors accused Jackson of conspiring to kidnap and imprison the accuser and his family as Jackson tried to diffuse the growing scandal the documentary caused. But Sneddon's main witness was the accuser's mother, who by most accounts, was a disaster on the stand.

"She sounded crazy and scheming and manipulative," says Keller. "She was the walking incarnation of reasonable doubt."

And, the defense insisted, she was a con artist not above lying under oath. A witness testified that the mother had done just that in a personal injury lawsuit against JC Penney – and won a $152,000 settlement.

"If she's willing to lie or falsify evidence in that case, the inference is, she's willing to lie or falsify the evidence in the case against Michael Jackson," says Smith.

To cement the image of the mother as a shameless grifter, the defense called Connie Keenan, whose community paper had run a sympathetic story on the accuser's struggle with cancer, soliciting donations for treatment. "I did a little bit of investigating on my own, and found out the family was totally covered for medical expenses," says Keenan. "I realized I'd been duped."

With the mother's credibility in tatters, Sneddon doubled his trouble by calling Debbie Rowe, Jackson's estranged wife. Keller says Rowe's testimony was the most electrifying moment in the trial: "Here you have a person with every reason to dislike Jackson, every reason to get back at him."

Rowe is involved in an ongoing custody dispute with Jackson over their two children, so it was shocking to hear her speak kindly of her troubled ex.

"She got up and said that he was one of the finest people she'd ever known," says Keller. "And wonderful father."

"She turned out to be one of the defense's star witnesses," says Smith.

With most of the prosecution's witnesses either discredited or actively helping the defense, jurors apparently found it impossible to get beyond a reasonable doubt.

"Sneddon's obsessed with Michael Jackson and he has been as long as anybody can remember," says Keller.

It's not hard to imagine Sneddon launching yet another Jackson investigation. "This was Capt. Ahab going after Moby Dick," says Keller.

But for now, it is the accuser and his family whose reputations are in ruins, while the King of Pop can spend the night back in his bed in Neverland.