It's clear that the jury didn't like the mother.  They rightly thought she was a liar and not credible.  But unfortunately the jury translated their distrust of the mother into distrust of the victim.  One juror went so far as to say that they believed the Michael had molested in the past but ultimately didn't convict because of their view towards "reasonable doubt."  The facts are that the victim was forced to admit to lying about something unrelated which really undermined his testimony in the eyes of the jury, however, he was crystal clear about what was done to him.  In my opinion, this jury ignored everything over their dislike for the mother, even ignoring the unchallenged issue of supplying alcohol to a minor.  To me, this simply shows that the jury ignored everything which I really don't think was right.  We are talking about a child here, a victim, and I just think that the jury confused "doubt" with "reasonable doubt."  There's always doubt.  But the doubt needs to rise to the level of being reasonable. 

I didn't mean to argue symantics and you are right, Jackson was presumed innocent and he is under the law innocent.  Except that now he has a license to go out and do it again.  If he is what people think he is, then he will through compulsion, arrogance and stupidity, do it again. 

The real matter in my mind was whether he did what he was accused of and should be prevented from having a chance to do it again, or whether he did not.  The victim was very clear about his claim and yet the jury threw it out.   Why?

I think the problem with this case was that the prosecution introduced all of this "false imprisonment" conspiracy stuff into the case.  If the case had been purely about the molestation, then the mother's testimony would never have come in.  In short, the prosecution got their strategy completely wrong.  I've also heard that they got the timeline wrong, relying too heavily on molestation that occurred after the Martin Bashir video.  This was because of the problem presented by the fact that the victim told someone he had not been molested and had to admit that he had lied about that.  They didn't want to raise this problem, so they wanted to concentrate solely on the period of time after the Bashir video.  Mistake.

But here the jury was equally not very smart.  They totally discounted the fact that we are talking about a child.  What child can be expected to tell the truth on demand about whether he was molested, let alone by someone so famous who at the time he might have been confused about and possibly still considered a friend?  But the defense was masterful in bringing this in and clouding the credibility of the victim here.  The jury let the defense get away with this by turning ordinary doubt into reasonable doubt.  Was it really reasonable to doubt this child who, after realizing how he had been abused, came forward to tell the truth despite having protected Michael in the past?  Personally, I don't think so, but this jury, I'm afraid, were confused, and that confusion came from the defense being able to taint the victim through the tainting of the mother.  And of course the prosecution's stupidity of bringing a case that would put the mother on the stand.