Former Jackson lawyer to testify
Another lawyer says pop star was exploited
 |  Michael Jackson arrives at court Thursday in Santa Maria, California. |
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 Macaulay Culkin testifies that Jackson "never" molested him.
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SANTA MARIA, California (CNN) -- The judge in the Michael Jackson trial Thursday ordered celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos to testify Friday as subpoenaed by his former client's defense team.
Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville flatly rejected a request to delay the lawyer's appearance because of a scheduling conflict.
Geragos represented Jackson after his arrest on child molestation charges in November 2003. He left the case at Jackson's request five months later and was replaced by Thomas Mesereau Jr.
At the time, Geragos also was representing Scott Peterson, accused of murdering his wife and unborn son, and Jackson said he needed the lawyer's undivided attention.
"My life is at stake," Jackson said at the time. Peterson was later convicted and sentenced to death.
Melville said Geragos should be treated "no different" from any other citizen with a busy schedule and said that a failure to show up would result in a warrant for his arrest.
"It's a subpoena. He has to obey," Melville said.
Public relations fiasco
In testimony Thursday, Jackson's former business attorney said the pop star had been exploited by unscrupulous business associates and misled by British journalist Martin Bashir.
It was Bashir's documentary "Living with Michael Jackson" that turned into a public relations fiasco.
The piece showed Jackson holding hands with a 13-year-old boy -- the accuser in the case against the entertainer -- and admitting he allowed underage children to sleep in his bed.
David LeGrand said he viewed the boy's family "as a personal liability" to Jackson and urged the entertainer's business partner, Marc Schaffel, to find a way to "wean away" the family from Jackson.
LeGrand also insisted he knew of no plot to control the family or hold them against their will, as the prosecution alleges.
He told jurors Jackson was "highly ill-liquid" and faced the possibility of bankruptcy in early 2003, with heavy debts and more than $10 million in unpaid bills.
At the time, Jackson was exploring possible marketing opportunities, including a perfume, gambling machines, a movie of his life's story and a TV special with the late Marlon Brando.
The contracts that Jackson signed with Bashir were "terrible," said LeGrand. They consisted of two one-paragraph documents that gave Bashir and Grenada Television the rights to the footage shot at Neverland Ranch, including an interview with Jackson, LeGrand said.
Bashir never followed through on a promise to let the pop star "screen and edit" the final product, LeGrand said.
And he told jurors he believed Bashir "had misrepresented to Mr. Jackson what they were going to accomplish in this production."
Alleged exploitation
LeGrand testified that after being hired in 2003, he quickly became "suspicious" of Jackson associates, who he believed were trying to control Jackson's business and financial affairs.
"It seemed everybody wanted to benefit from Mr. Jackson in one way or the other," LeGrand said.
One associate, Ronald Konitzer, had obtained power of attorney to act on Jackson's behalf, said LeGrand, and with another associate, Dieter Weizner, had developed a new business plan that was "disturbing" and "amateurish."
LeGrand said he was fired in March 2003, two weeks after sending a letter to Konitzer demanding to know where certain money went.
He said an audit of Jackson's finances and an investigation by private investigators found Konitzer had diverted $960,000 of the $3 million in fees paid by the Fox network to Jackson for a program rebutting Bashir's documentary.
The defense has argued that Jackson was disengaged and unaware of what his associates might have been doing.
It was during February and March 2003 that the prosecution alleges Jackson conspired with Konitzer, Weizner, Schaffel and two other men to control and intimidate the family of Jackson's accuser in the weeks after the Bashir documentary aired.
The allegations include holding the family against its will at Neverland. And it was during that period the accuser, now 15, says Jackson molested him on overnight stays in the singer's bedroom suite.
LeGrand said he met the accuser's family during that period and they did not appear to be be held against their will. He said during conversations with the accuser's mother, "She seemed satisfied to be there."
Jury sees videotaped conversations
On Wednesday and Thursday the defense -- trying to support its contention that Bashir deceived Jackson -- played for jurors nearly three hours of video of Bashir's conversations with Jackson.
The footage was shot by the pop star's personal videographer, Hamid Moslehi, who had his cameras trained on the British journalist when he was at Neverland.
LeGrand said he had originally urged Jackson's associates to make Moslehi's footage the central focus of the Fox rebuttal to Bashir's documentary.
LeGrand said he believed the footage "revealed Martin Bashir to be deceptive and less than forthcoming."
When Jackson at one point complained that media coverage of him is often "twisted," Bashir assured him, "We aren't going to do that here." He also told Jackson that the entertainer was "looking so sexy" during the taping.
Other testimony
Also taking the stand Thursday was the son of a Jackson employee, Carlos Velasco. He had attended high school with a boy who had earlier testified of being molested by Jackson.
Velasco said he saw the two on several occasions and never saw or heard anything inappropriate.
Velasco said the boy never spoke about being molested at the time. Under prosecution questioning, he acknowledged that he also did not know whether molestation had actually occurred.
Jackson was indicted last year on 10 felony counts for incidents that include a lewd act on a child; conspiracy to commit abduction, false imprisonment and extortion; and the use of an intoxicant before the commission of a felony.
Jackson pleaded not guilty to the charges.
CNN's Dree De Clamecy contributed to this report.
