Lawyers for Michael Jackson’s doctor hope to launch a last-ditch fightback this week, after a month of prosecution testimony mostly implicating medic Conrad Murray over the star’s 2009 death.
Murray’s attorney Ed Chernoff is to begin presenting defense witnesses at the Los Angeles Superior Court, where the involuntary manslaughter trial could go to the jury as early as the end of this week.
So far witnesses called by prosecutors have given a litany of evidence suggesting Murray was grossly negligent by administering a deadly cocktail of drugs to help the King of Pop sleep, and abandoning him at the vital moment.
The 58-year-old Trinidad-born medic, who has sat grim-faced throughout proceedings, faces four years in jail if found guilty at the long-awaited trial.
The court case — attended near daily by Jackson’s mother Katherine and father Joe as well as siblings including LaToya and Janet — opened on September 27 with a double shock for the family and fans demonstrating outside.
First was a photo of a horribly thin looking Jackson on a hospital gurney after his death from an overdose from “acute propofol intoxication” on June 25, 2009, at his rented Los Angeles mansion.
But perhaps even more shocking was the audio tape of a heavily-drugged Jackson, telling Murray — who was being paid $150,000 a month by the star — weeks before his death of his hopes for a series of comeback shows in London.
“When people leave my show, I want them to say, ‘I’ve never seen nothing like this in my life,'” the unrecognizable voice slurs, adding: “We have to be phenomenal.” At another point he laments: “I didn’t have a childhood.”
Then came the first witnesses, including producer Kenny Ortega, who recalled Jackson as a “lost boy,” clearly unwell a week before his death — but full of life the night before he died, planning a world tour and a “Thriller” film.
Security guards and assistants came next, recounting the frenzied efforts to revive Jackson after they were called to the bedroom where Murray had spent the night with the singer, trying in vain to help him sleep.
The hushed court heard how Jackson’s daughter Paris screamed “Daddy!” as she saw her apparently lifeless father, whose body had an intravenous (IV) drip in one leg, a condom catheter on his penis, and an oxygen tube under his nose.
Paramedics described how Jackson appeared to have been dead for some time when they arrived, but were persuaded by Murray to take him to the UCLA Medical Center emergency room to try to revive him anyway.
One of the highlights was the recording of an interview Murray gave police two days after Jackson’s death.
In it the doctor recounted how he battled to help Jackson to sleep, from around 1:00 am, with a series of IV infusions of sedatives before finally agreeing to give him 25 mg of propofol at 10:40 am.
He said he was only out of the room for two minutes to go to the bathroom, and returned to find Jackson not breathing.
But the timeline given was almost immediately called into question by witnesses, including a series of lady friends with whom Murray had telephone calls during a crucial 47-minute period.
Cocktail waitress Sade Anding told how she heard “coughing” and realized Murray had dropped the phone a few minutes before midday — more than 20 minutes before the first 911 call was made at 12:20 pm.
Over the last week or two a series of medics and experts have testified that Jackson could not possibly have caused his own death, as the defense had suggested, by taking extra doses of drugs while Murray was out of the room.
Critical care specialist Dr. Nader Kamangar said the cocktail of sedatives lorazepam and midazolam, as well as propofol given to Jackson was a “recipe for disaster,” especially combined with other failings.
A seeming admission that defense lawyers were struggling came when they said on October 12 that they would no longer claim that Jackson could have drunk propofol — which he called “milk,” while Murray was out of the room.
That left open the possibility that Jackson self-injected it through his leg IV — but that was described as a “crazy scenario” by the prosecution’s last witness, anesthesiologist Steven Shafer, at the end of the fourth week.
Murray’s lawyers say they plan to present some 15 witnesses, including medical experts, character witnesses and police officers. They have their work cut out over the coming days.
