Media balks at Jackson grand jury secrecy

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 31 (UPI) -- The grand jury in the Michael Jackson molestation case met secretly for a second time amid the media's appeal for more access to the California hearings.

The grand jury met Tuesday on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, Calif., at the end of a barricaded road, with witnesses traveling by vans with dark windows, security measures that a media attorney called "unprecedented," the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

"County officials have invoked an extraordinary, and seemingly unprecedented, approach to grand jury secrecy ... , said Theodore Boutrous Jr., an attorney representing a coalition of news organizations urging the courts to ease the tight security.

The heightened security of moving the grand jury witnesses to different locations to keep the press and public from knowing their whereabouts is necessary, one source said.

"This case is probably the most highly publicized case in the world," said Jim Thomas, a former Santa Barbara County Sheriff who now works as an NBC analyst on the case. "Because of that, there's been an extra need to keep press coverage from turning into a complete circus."