Jackson surrenders!

SANTA BARBARA, California: A handcuffed Michael Jackson walked into the Santa Barbara jail yesterday to face child molestation charges that could send the pop superstar to prison for years if he is convicted. A private jet carrying Jackson landed at the Santa Barbara airport shortly before noon and rolled its nose into the partly opened doors of a hangar. A caravan of cars left the hangar shortly afterward. Jackson, his hands cuffed behind his back, was escorted into the Santa Barbara County main jail shortly after noon. Sheriff Jim Anderson said the booking would take about an hour and that Jackson was expected to immediately post his US$3 million bail.

Jackson had been in Las Vegas filming a music video when dozens of law enforcement agents swarmed his Neverland Ranch compound near Santa Barbara on Tuesday to serve a search warrant. Authorities announced Wednesday that an arrest warrant alleging child molestation had been issued. He had not been formally charged. A family friend, Steve Manning, told ABC's Good Morning America yesterday that Jackson's family came to Las Vegas to support him. "He feels he's been wrongly accused and he's going to fight this tooth and nail," Manning said. "He's at war right now and he's going to use any weapon he has to fight these charges." Jackson is charged by the state with lewd or lascivious acts with a child under age 14, punishable by three to eight years in prison, law enforcement officials said.

His attorney is also the defence attorney in the Laci Peterson murder case. "Get over here and get checked in," District Attorney Thomas W Sneddon Jr advised the 45-year-old King of Pop at a news conference broadcast worldwide Wednesday. "Michael would never harm a child in any way," Jackson spokesman Stuart Backerman said in a statement. "These scurrilous and totally unfounded allegations will be proven false in a courtroom." Similar allegations surfaced against Jackson a decade ago, but they never led to the filing of criminal charges and in 1994 the probe became inactive. Jackson had maintained his innocence but reportedly paid a multimillion-dollar civil settlement, and the child would not testify in any criminal proceeding. Johnnie Cochran, Michael Jackson's attorney in 1993, discusses the latest charges during in an interview with Today  host Katie Couric. Sneddon  said this case was different because he had a cooperative victim and because of a change in state law "specifically because of the 1993-94 Michael Jackson investigation."

Sneddon told the news conference multiple counts would be filed against Jackson "in a very short period of time," and noted that no civil case has been filed and none is expected, unlike 1993. Sneddon would not say when or where the alleged crimes took place or how old the child was. He said an affidavit outlining the details will be sealed for 45 days. But Brian Oxman, who has been an attorney for the Jackson family for years but is not directly representing Michael Jackson in this case, told CBS that the case involves the alleged molestation of a 12-year-old boy at Neverland Ranch, the storybook playground where the singer has been known to hold sleepover parties with children. In a documentary broadcast on ABC earlier this year, Jackson said he had slept in a bed with many children. "When you say 'bed,' you're thinking sexual," he said in the interview.

"It's not sexual, we're going to sleep. I tuck them in. ... It's very charming, it's very sweet." Jackson, in a statement Tuesday, noted that the allegations surfaced the same day a new greatest hits CD, "Number Ones," was released, but the district attorney dismissed any connection. "Like the sheriff and I are really into that kind of music," Sneddon said. On Wednesday, CBS pulled a Jackson music special planned for next Wednesday on his greatest hits and the impact on pop culture of the former child star who got his start with his brothers as a member of the singing-and-dancing Jackson 5.