SANTA MARIA, Calif. – No makeup. No wig. And nowhere to hide from a camera recording his every move.Prison isn’t generally much fun for anyone. But for the germphobic, appearance-obsessed, privacy-seeking Michael Jackson, it sounds like his own personal hell.
And he’s staring into it now that the jury has begun deliberating.
If the jurors believe the King of Pop molested a young cancer patient, Jackson will trade in his lavish Neverland estate for an 8-foot-by-8-foot beige cinder-block cell in the Santa Barbara County Jail.
The dreary room features a seatless metal toilet, a low cement bunk with a thin foam mattress, a drain in the floor and a camera in the ceiling. The only window is to the interior corridor, where passing guards can look through the shatterproof glass at the prisoner.
“He will not have his wig. He will not have his makeup. There will be no deputy sheriff holding an umbrella for him,” said former Santa Barbara County Sheriff Jim Thomas, who ran the jail for seven years. “He would probably be considered a potential suicide risk and be put under 24-hour watch. Especially with a high-profile person like him, you never want anything to happen. He will not have any privacy. He will always be watched.”
If the jury pronounces Jackson guilty of a felony count, his hands would be cuffed behind his back and he would be led away by bailiffs to a waiting van.
The ride to the Santa Barbara jail takes about an hour and torments the prisoner with a final look at one of the country’s most gorgeous landscapes: the provincial vineyards seen in the movie “Sideways.”
At the jail, a series of low stucco buildings are enclosed by metal fencing.
Prisoners are led through a metal door to the processing area. A clean freak, Jackson would surely not enjoy walking past the sign taped to the wall that says, “Alert: check all incoming men/women for ‘spider bites’ and/or skin abcess [sic].”
He would be taken to a small room with a beatup pay phone on the wall next to an ad for “Smitty’s Bail Bonds” where he would have to fork over his possessions. His gaudy, bejeweled courtroom duds would be taken away and replaced by a plain prison jumpsuit.
Jackson would be put in isolation for his own protection, Thomas said. “Child molesters don’t do well in prison. Even your hardest gangbanging murderer out there doesn’t like people who do kids,” Thomas said.
After about 30 days, Thomas said, Jackson would be moved to a high-security cell at the state prison in Corcoran, which houses California’s most dangerous and highest-profile convicts, including Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan. If convicted on all counts, Jackson faces a maximum of 18 years and eight months.
Jacko’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, told MSNBC last week the pop singer could survive the slammer. “While he looks kind of delicate, and dances, and talks in a kind of high-pitched voice, he’s really a very tough and smart guy,” Jesse Jackson said.
The former sheriff agreed that Jackson, despite his many shenanigans and eccentricities, would manage behind bars – if it comes to that. “He’s impressed me. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to sit through court but he has, after the judge cracked down. He has a capability to follow directions,” Thomas said. “He’ll do what needs to be done and follow the rules. Of course, he won’t have much choice.”