My life was a blues song to the max'—U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham ordered Cartier to change her clothes when she strode into court on the day of Jackson's testimony dressed in fishnet stockings, spike heels and a tight black leather dress that revealed her cleavage.

"I had dressed like a schoolmarm, a frump, for the entire trial," she said. So she wore the leather dress featured in her Dangerous video that had aired on television all week during the trial. "I didn't want Michael to totally upstage me," she said.

"Gee, all this over some cleavage," Cartier said. "Michael sat there wearing his little suit with orange epaulets and more makeup than I did. He looked like a flaming drag queen. What I wore was disrespectful? They acted like I was wearing pasties! It was horrible."

The media frenzy provoked by the dress and the judge's rebuke led Cartier to stay home when the verdict was read.

"I couldn't take it anymore," she said, tears streaming down her face at the memory of her humiliation. "I couldn't believe the verdict. It started out as David and Goliath, but all of a sudden I was Jezebel, thrown to the dogs and all over some cleavage."

And it began a descent into depression that stopped Cartier from performing. Rocky Mountain News