Jurors in Michael Jackson's molestation trial on Friday were shown two picture books with photos of naked boys seized from the entertainer's Neverland estate during an August 1993 police raid.

The books, entitled Boys Will Be Boys and The Boy: A Photographic Essay, were taken when Los Angeles police were investigating molestation allegations against Jackson that were later dropped when the one-time "King of Pop" agreed to pay a multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement.

In one of the two books, which was marked "very scarce" by a book dealer, Jackson had apparently inscribed a note: "Look at the true spirit of happiness and joy in these boys' faces. This is the spirit of boyhood, a life I never had and will always dream of. This is the life I want for my children."

Jackson's lawyers had sought to exclude the evidence, arguing that it was not relevant to the charges at the heart of the trial of the 46-year-old entertainer and misrepresented the content of his large library.

"This case really isn't about 1993," defence lawyer Robert Sanger said in arguments before jurors heard testimony related to the photo books.

Sanger argued that prosecutors, who plan to rest next week, were trying to shore up a losing case that Jackson molested a 13-year-old boy in 2003 after plying him with alcohol and conspiring to hold his family as virtual hostages at Neverland in central California.

Jackson, who has pleaded innocent, faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted of all 10 charges against him.

Prosecutors have used an unusual provision of California law to introduce evidence about past claims of sexual abuse, saying such testimony was needed to put the claims of his now 15-year-old accuser in context for jurors.

"Their current case is very weak. This is a further attempt to bolster that," Sanger said.

But Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville, who earlier allowed jurors to hear claims suggesting Jackson is a serial molester, sided again with prosecutors by allowing Detective Rosibel Smith to testify about the picture books.

Jurors, he said, might conclude that some of the photos were sexually explicit depictions of boys.

One of the books was apparently a gift from a Jackson fan, Rhonda, who inscribed it for him and decorated it with drawings of hearts and balloons.

In a win for Jackson's lawyers, Melville also ruled on Friday that jurors would not hear testimony from a tabloid journalist who had arranged to interview the family of Jackson's accuser.

The interview had been set for early 2003 when the entertainer's camp was scrambling to repair his public image after a controversial documentary in which he compared himself to Peter Pan and defended his practice of sharing his bed with children.

Ian Drew, a reporter now with US Weekly, said he was told by one of Jackson's associates and an unindicted co-conspirator in the case that the interview would have to be scrapped because the accuser's family had fled Neverland.

"I was told they had disappeared, that they couldn't keep them there anymore," Drew said with jurors out of the courtroom. "To the best of my recollection, the word 'escape' was used."

Melville said that that testimony, which would have been complicated by state legal limits on the use of reporters as witnesses, did not link Jackson to the alleged conspiracy and was undercut by a "real vagueness with regard to the word 'escape'".