Michael Jackson Due Back in Court After Illness

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Michael Jackson was expected back in a California courtroom on Tuesday for the first time since suffering a “flu-like illness” that forced a one-week suspension of his child molestation trial.

The 46-year-old pop star last Tuesday became so sick while on his way to court in Santa Maria, about 30 minutes by car from his Neverland Valley Ranch, that he was driven instead to a local hospital.

The sudden illness came as a surprise to Jackson’s own lawyers — who were in court and ready to proceed with jury selection — and to Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville, who conferred with emergency room doctors before sending more than 100 jury candidates home for a week.

The delay brought grumbles from some of the would-be jurors, who have been summoned to court on only four days since jury selection began on Jan. 31. The trial was also halted for a week after the sister of Jackson’s lead attorney, Tom Mesereau, died.

Jackson was given intravenous fluids at Santa Maria’s Marian Medical Center for what Dr. Chuck Merrill described as “a flu-like illness with some vomiting” before the singer was discharged the following day.

Jackson is charged in a 10-count indictment with molesting a 13-year-old boy at Neverland and with conspiring to commit child abduction, false imprisonment and extortion.

Melville has established a pool of about 240 prospective jurors, from which he will choose the 12 men and women who will ultimately decide Jackson’s fate. The judge also wants to pick eight alternates, who will replace any jurors dismissed during the six-month trial.

If jury selection resumes as scheduled on Tuesday, prosecutors will pick up where they left off, carefully questioning 18 people who were selected at random to sit in the jury box.

Mesereau spent most of a day conducting his questioning of the panel — a process known in legal terms as “voir dire” — asking each prospective juror about his or her knowledge of the sensational case and its attendant press coverage. 

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