Jury convicts Jackson’s doctor
LOS ANGELES – A Los Angeles jury convicted Michael Jackson’s personal physician of involuntary manslaughter, concluding a trial that offered a glimpse of the last days of one of the world’s most famous men by deciding that his death was a criminal act.
The verdict was delivered Monday in a windowless downtown courtroom a world away from the turreted Holmby Hills mansion where Dr. Conrad Murray had a $150,000-a-month position that included providing what the pop star called “milk” – the surgical anesthetic that ultimately claimed his life.
With its verdict, the jury found that Murray acted with criminal negligence and that those actions were a substantial factor in Jackson’s 2009 death. The panel rejected the defense assertion that Jackson gave himself a fatal overdose of propofol and therefore bore complete responsibility for his own death.
Immediately after the verdict, Murray was placed in handcuffs at the direction of the trial judge, to remain in custody pending his Nov. 29 sentencing.
“This is a crime where the end result was the death of a human being. That factor demands rather dramatically that the public should be protected,” Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor said.
The cardiologist, who had once told patients that working for Jackson was “the opportunity of a lifetime,” faces a maximum penalty of four years in state prison.
The stern approach Pastor took in sending Murray to jail rather than releasing him on bail suggested the minimum sentence of probation is unlikely.
Authorities in Texas and Nevada are expected to revoke his medical licenses. The California Medical Board suspended his license earlier this year.
After the verdict, Murray’s jury consultant, John G. McCabe, said the doctor’s biggest challenge had been the intense coverage of the singer’s death. Of the nearly 150 citizens in the jury pool, every one said they had heard of the case against Murray.
He noted that propofol, unknown outside of anesthesiology circles the day Jackson died, quickly entered the common vocabulary as “that powerful, dangerous surgical anesthetic.”
“Would the verdict have come out the way it did if there hadn’t been two years of pretrial publicity? We’ll never know,” he said.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley denied that the case was brought only because it involved Jackson and said the office would prosecute any doctor.
“To the extent that someone dies as a result of their being a so-called Dr. Feelgood, they will be held accountable,” Cooley said.
The verdict came on the second day of deliberations and was read to a packed courtroom that included Jackson’s parents, some of his siblings and devoted fans. As a court clerk pronounced the word guilty, there was a gasp from the singer’s family.