LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson. Robert Blake. Kobe Bryant. And before them all, O.J. Simpson.

The facts, the accusations, the lawyers and the reliability of witnesses were quite different in each case. But the acquittal of Jackson on all counts against him has prompted a debate once again among the public and in legal circles of what role celebrity plays in America's criminal justice system.

Perhaps, as some defense lawyers suggested and supporters of Jackson contended, ambitious prosecutors go after the innocent or bring exceedingly weak cases, which jurors spot readily. Deciding the fate of a celebrity under intense news media scrutiny could bring so much pressure that jurors simply hold prosecutors to a higher standard.

And perhaps, as some prosecutors say, celebrities can afford such good lawyers that they can beat any charges. Jurors might also sympathize with the plight of the famous as targets of the unscrupulous. And jurors might be swayed by their preconceived notions of a celebrity, disregarding contradictory evidence.

In the end, people's opinions about whether celebrities get favorable treatment or fail to get a fair shake inevitably depend on their role in the case.

"My own view of the rule is that most celebrities have more of a problem establishing their innocence," said Robert Morvillo, who defended Martha Stewart.

Marcia Clark, who unsuccessfully prosecuted Simpson and will write a column for a forthcoming magazine, Justice, had the opposite view. "The case becomes so serious and so important," she said, "the standard of proof grows higher and higher and higher."

At the end of the day, Clark said, "guilt beyond reasonable doubt becomes guilt beyond all possible doubt."

Celebrities, of course, do not enjoy absolute immunity. Winona Ryder was convicted of shoplifting; Stewart went to prison on charges that she misled investigators about a stock sale.

Still, jurors may be more willing to sympathize with celebrities than they had in the past, as the lives of the famous have been subject to more scrutiny in recent years.

"In the last couple of decades, the industry which feeds, celebrates and trashes celebrity has flourished," said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

"No one is any longer in the position of a naive fan," Kaplan continued. "We have all been taken behind the curtain, we all know about publicists and blackmailers and entourages and villainous retinues and treacherous friends and nannies who sell the secrets of their employers, and maitre d's capitalizing on this stuff."