'It was the celebrity factor that won it'

The prosecutor has blamed the "celebrity factor" for the not-guilty verdicts.

Santa Barbara district attorney Thomas Sneddon denied he was on a vendetta after the first allegations against Jackson surfaced in 1993.

He suggested that Jackson's superstar status had made him more difficult to convict and defended his decision to go to court on evidence given by Gavin Arvizo and his family, who were attacked by the defence. "People come in and they are victims of crime," said Sneddon. "We do not select victims and we do not select the families they come from. We felt we had a good case this time and we did a conscientious job."

Legal experts said Sneddon's undoing was the lack of credibility that dogged the teenage accuser and his mother. Jackson's lead lawyer Thomas Mesereau called them "con artists, actors and liars".

Jurors in American criminal cases are required to find that a defendant is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt", a