Michael Jackson’s former attorneys have quite divergent paths since the child molestation trial in 2005. This week, Brian Oxman was disbarred by the California Bar Association for a host of malfeasance. Meanwhile, Thomas Mesereau continues to be a hero, handling pro bono cases to exonerate the wrongly accused in Alabama. Here’s a release from the Mesereau office about their latest accomplishment. Can you imagine that Mesereau had to put up with Oxman during the Jackson trial? The man has patience.

read also: http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/07/06/brian-oxman-disbarred-was-once-michael-jackson-lawyer-sort-of

July 9, 2012 – The Firm of Mesereau & Yu, LLP, is pleased to announce that Tom Mesereau’s former client, Wesley Quick, who was acquitted of capital murder and avoided the death penalty in 2003, has been listed in the “National Registry of Exonerations.”  A joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University School of Law, The National Registry of Exonerations is a newly published report on exonerated defendants between the years 1989 and 2012.

Mr. Quick was originally represented by other counsel when he was convicted of two counts of capital murder by a jury in Birmingham, Alabama in 1997.  He received the death penalty and spent four and a half years on Alabama’s death row before his convictions were reversed on a technicality.  The original jury heard evidence of devil worship, excessive drug use, and random targeting of innocent citizens for murder.

After his conviction was reversed, Mr. Quick hired Mesereau’s colleague and friend in Birmingham, noted criminal defense lawyer Charles Salvagio.  Mr. Salvagio asked Mr. Mesereau to try the case with him.  In a stunning reversal, Mr. Quick was acquitted of all counts in a high profile jury trial.  This resulted in a widely read editorial about injustice in death penalty cases by the Birmingham news.

Mr. Quick’s listing in the National Registry of Exonerations means that he has been completely exonerated from all legal obligations associated with this death penalty case.

At the time, Mr. Quick’s acquittal was the third high profile victory in a capital murder trial for Mr. Mesereau and Mr. Salvagio.  They had previously acquitted a homeless black man, who was charged with murdering a beautiful white woman in Birmingham.  This trial was also controversial and subjected to enormous media coverage.  On a prior occasion, the Mesereau/Salvagio team had won a high profile capital murder trial in Bessemer, Alabama, in which they represented a young mother charged with murdering her baby daughter with an M & M filled bottle.  She was acquitted of capital murder and murder and convicted of the lesser-included offense of manslaughter.

Mr. Mesereau has been defending clients accused of capital murder for the last fourteen years.  All of these cases have been in Alabama and Mississippi.  Mr. Mesereau defends one to two capital murder cases in the Deep South each year for no legal fees.

What really happened to Rielle Hunter’s book called “What Really Happened?” Well, it was released on June 22nd. Three weeks later–or less than–it’s over. Dead. Kaput. Amazon has it ranked number 1,360. That’s one thousand three hundred sixty. So after “20/20” and ABC demolished her, John Edwards dumped her, and people were outraged by her comments about Elizabeth Edwards, Hunter is over. No regular publisher took the book, so a small indie house brought it out. Let’s hope they didn’t print too many. Hunter used Rosemarie Terenzio as her New York publicist. Terenzio is not known as a book publicist but she was John F. Kennedy Jr.’s assistant years ago at George magazine. This week Terenzio is making the rounds on TV pushing the paperback of her own book about John John and Carolyn Bessette. It’s called — or should be– “I Waited Long Enough, Now I’m Cashing In.” The actual paperback, “Fairy Tale Interrupted” is sitting at number 901 on amazon.com tonight. No one’s interested in this stuff because they smell something is sour. That’s at least reassuring. Is Rielle Hunter over? I’d say her next stop is “Celebrity Apprentice.” Just wait.

Wow–that was fast. This morning Little Brown announced they’re publishing Elton John’s book, “Love Is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS” next week. Next week! The book was just announced in January.  All the proceeds will go to the Elton John AIDS Foundation, of course. It’s not a kiss and tell or rock and roll memoir. It’s the story of how Sir Elton became politicized and an activist in the war on AIDS. His remarkable foundation has raised millions. More to come…

Tameka Foster’s soap opera like life took a tragic turn this weekend. Her 11 year old son, Kyle Glover, is brain dead after an accident in which a man riding a jet ski literally ran over Kyle, who was in an inner tube in Lake Lanier in Atlanta. It’s an unimaginable tragedy for a mother to endure. Everyone is sending prayers to Foster, to her ex husband R&B singer Usher, and Kyle’s father, an Atlanta clothier. Usher and Foster were married a short time, but their union produced two other sons. During the course of their relationship,

Usher’s mother, Jonetta Patton, who is also his sometime manager, was vocally against the couple. Foster is nine years older than Usher. Rumors circulated frequently that Foster was a Scientologist, and that she’d converted Usher. But when I asked her about it in February 2008, she said, with a laugh: “Scien-what? Honey, I can’t even spell it! No, I am not a Scientologist.”

The handful of times I met Foster she was like that, very direct and with a good sense of humor. She’s going to need every ounce of strength now, and support from everyone.

You’ve probably read all about Kenneth Lonergan’s lost movie, “Margaret.” (Lonergan wrote and directed the award winning “You Can Count on Me” and is a much praised playwright.) Shot in 2005 for Fox Searchlight, then delivered into editing hell. It wasn’t released until last year, and the cut that made it to the big screen wasn’t Lonergan’s but from the House of Scorsese. Lonergan has spent seven years fighting with Fox Searchlight. Tonight (Monday) his director’s cut will screen downtown, and on Tuesday a double CD will be released of both his cut and the edited one. I watched the edited one finally over the weekend. I will also attend the longer version.

Either way, it’s criminal that “Margaret” was screwed around with in this way. Long before she was Sookie Stackhouse in “True Blood,” Anna Paquin would have easily been nominated for Best Actress. Jeannie Berlin, of “The Heartbreak Kid” fame, daughter of Elaine May, and well known New York actress, does the best work of her life and would have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She might have won, actually. She’s that good.

“Margaret” is not the name of any character in this movie. The title is taken from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called “Spring and Fall.” (I’ll include the poem at the end of this post.) Anna Paquin plays Lisa, a high school girl who inadvertently causes a terrible accident involving a New York City bus and a pedestrian. Mark Ruffalo is the bus driver. Allison Janney is the unfortunate victim. The cast is rounded out by lots of well known faces– Matt Damon, Matthew Broderick, Michael Ealy, Kieran Culkin,  and also in an illuminating supporting role, J. Smith-Cameron, who is also Mrs. Lonergan.

This is not an easy movie. However it’s edited, and whichever version you see, “Margaret” makes for a tense sit through. It’s really as if Lonergan should have written it as a novel, then adapted it to a screenplay. It plays like a great novel, and I’m sorry there isn’t one. The backstories are so nuanced, the characterizations are so rich, and the plot is that compelling. But it moves slowly some times, quickly at others, which is frustrating. Nevertheless, it’s a better movie than “The Tree of Life,” which Fox Searchlight supported and was basically incomprehensible. So there. Watch this movie, please. It’s too importan to have missed it, knowing now that it exists.

Oh and for goodness sake, go back and see Jeannie Berlin in one the great all time comedies, “The Heartbreak Kid,” from Elaine May and Neil Simon.

“Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

MARGARET, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.