The Verdict on ‘Michael Jackson: The Verdict’? The Culture Is Guilty

The three-part Netflix docuseries on Jackson's 2005 criminal trial lays bare how the legal system and American pop culture failed to protect a child victim.

(Netflix)

In my second year of law school, I worked as a student attorney for the defense on a high-profile celebrity criminal case that never went to trial. While I thought the charges were unjust and was happy with the outcome of that case, I knew then that I would never practice law. I saw up close what it takes to win, how money and fame breed results that a poor Black person would never see, and I did not want to be a part of legitimizing the “criminal justice” system. Years later, I committed myself to abolishing that system.

Docuseries like Netflix’s Michael Jackson: The Verdict prove the abolitionist creed: There is no justice in the justice system.

Fresh on the heels of the empty, propaganda-filled biopic Michael, which stars Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the titular role, whitewashed of any allegations, Michael Jackson: The Verdict offers a fuller story of the man and his machinations to skirt accountability.

Ironically, The Verdict docuseries begins the way the original version of Michael was set to begin: with a police raid on Neverland Ranch in the wake of child molestation allegations against Jackson. Michael director Antoine Fuqua shot and was in post-production on this version, which was meant to cover (and ultimately try to discredit) the 1993 allegations made by 13-year-old Jordan Chandler. But Jackson’s $23 million settlement with the Chandler family in 1994 to avoid a criminal and civil trial included a clause that would prevent Jackson and his estate from dramatizing Chandler and his family, leading to that version of the film being scrapped and reshot to omit any allegations altogether.

The Verdict, however, was not made by the estate. It begins with police footage of the second raid on Neverland in 2003 and focuses instead on another 13-year-old boy’s allegations of child molestation against Jackson—the one who actually made it through to trial because Jackson didn’t settle the case to avoid it—Gavin Arvizo.

Recounting the events of the pop superstar’s 2005 criminal trial, Michael Jackson: The Verdict is a three-episode series that details how the legal system and American pop culture failed yet another child victim.