Nation in brief

Michael Jackson dumps lawyers, gets a new one

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson has replaced his legal team just days before he is scheduled to be arraigned on child molesting charges, the departing lawyers said.

Benjamin Brafman, a New York criminal defense attorney hired by Jackson shortly after felony child molesting charges were announced in December, said on Sunday that serious conflicts had been brewing for weeks between Jackson's legal team and a large group of family members and others advising him.

"This is a decision that was unavoidable under the circumstances," Brafman said. "Mark Geragos and I are stepping down - or as the Jackson camp is suggesting, being replaced. The fact is, this point was coming to a head over a number of complicated legal and practical issues that it would be inappropriate to discuss."

Geragos confirmed that he also would no longer represent Jackson. He is the lead defense attorney in another high-profile case, the murder prosecution of Scott Peterson of Modesto, Calif. Jackson's defense will now be led by Thomas Mesereau Jr., a Los Angeles attorney whose best known recent client was the actor Robert Blake, charged with murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, three years ago. In February, Blake dismissed Mesereau, the third attorney to represent him.

The authorities in Santa Barbara County charged Jackson in December with seven counts of child molesting and two counts of administering alcohol to a minor.

A Santa Barbara County grand jury handed up a sealed indictment of Jackson last week after 13 days of closed-door testimony. Jackson is set to be arraigned on Friday.

Brafman said that despite differences with Jackson and his camp over legal strategy he wished the singer well.

"I hope with all my heart that at the end of this ordeal he is in fact exonerated," Brafman said.

BOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Justices of the peace in Massachusetts must perform same-sex marriages when they become legal in the state next month, state officials said Sunday.

"Your task is straightforward and can be summed up in three words: Follow the law," Daniel B. Winslow, chief legal counsel for Gov. Mitt Romney, told a meeting of the Massachusetts Justices of the Peace Association.

Winslow urged any justice with qualms about officiating for same-sex couples to resign.

The state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that it was unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses but stayed its decision for 180 days to give the Legislature time to act. Despite efforts to delay the ruling, officials are preparing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples starting on May 17.

But Romney said on Friday that same-sex couples who lived outside Massachusetts would not be able to marry in the state. The governor, who opposes same-sex marriages, said his authority to deny licenses to nonresidents rested on a 1913 law that says people cannot get married in Massachusetts if their union would be "void" in their home state.

Winslow told the justices to marry couples who present them with new, gender-neutral paperwork certified by a clerk and not to inquire about residency. The onus to enforce the 1913 law, Winslow said, lies with the clerks. If the couple are later found to reside outside Massachusetts, their union would be voided by the law and the justice would face no penalties, he said. The new paperwork asks for proof of residency.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - A 5-year-old girl was found bound in duct tape under a tarp at an abandoned warehouse Sunday, a day after she left home to visit a friend two blocks away.

A potential buyer of the warehouse in suburban DeWitt found the girl after he heard her crying and looked under the tarp. She was reported in stable condition at University Hospital, and gave authorities a description of her abductor, whom police were searching for Sunday night.

Police would not say Sunday whether the girl had been abused.

The girl's mother told police her daughter left their Syracuse home at 6 p.m. Saturday to visit her friend. The mother called the friend's house to see if the girl arrived safely and called police when she learned she hadn't.

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