Ex-Jackson bodyguard may refuse to testify
Key prosecution witness charged in Nevada robberies
(CNN) -- A key prosecution witness in the Michael Jackson case charged in a string of armed robberies in Nevada likely will refuse to testify at the pop star's trial, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Christopher Eric Carter, a 25-year-old former Jackson bodyguard, testified before the grand jury in California that indicted Jackson last year that he saw the singer drinking alcohol with his teenage accuser.
During a court appearance Wednesday in Las Vegas, Carter pleaded not guilty to 15 felony charges, including robbery, burglary and kidnapping. He remains jailed on $250,000 bond.
Carter's attorney, Lloyd Baker, said he has advised his client "to remain silent" and invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination if he is taken to California to testify in Jackson's trial next month.
Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville, who is presiding over Jackson's trial, has signed an order for Carter to be brought from Las Vegas to Santa Maria on April 4 to testify.
Baker said testifying would open up Carter to cross-examination about his existing criminal charges, and he said Carter may have information about unindicted co-conspirators named in the Jackson case.
Carter was arrested February 19 on charges stemming from a string of armed robberies in the Las Vegas area that stretched back to October 2003. (Full story)
Prosecutor Susan Krisko told the judge Wednesday that Carter has confessed.
Police have said Carter also is being investigated as a possible suspect in a series of bank robberies in Las Vegas.
According to transcripts of his testimony before the Santa Barbara County grand jury that indicted Jackson in April 2004, Carter said he met Jackson at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and worked as a security guard for the pop star from August 2002 to August 2003.
He testified that he saw both Jackson and his accuser drinking alcohol from soda cans while on a flight from Miami to California in February 2003.
He said he also saw the boy "stumbling" drunk one afternoon at Jackson's Neverland Ranch, and the boy indicated to him that Jackson condoned his drinking.
Carter's testimony would be important to the prosecution because his grand jury statement appears to offer independent corroboration of the accuser's testimony that the singer gave him alcohol, as the indictment against Jackson alleges.
So far in the trial, the only witnesses to corroborate the charges of drinking have been the accuser's brother and sister.
In his grand jury testimony, Carter said that after the trip from Miami the accuser's mother asked him to take her off the ranch in the middle of the night, without her children.
She was upset and prayed throughout the drive to Los Angeles, Carter said.
The prosecution contends that the accuser and his family were held against their will at Neverland by Jackson's associates after the Miami trip and that the mother was fearful for their safety.
Carter told the grand jury that Jackson had the ability to monitor phone conversations at Neverland and once showed him a tape he had made of a phone conversation he had recorded.
CNN's Stan Wilson contributed to this report.
