A desperate, drug-addicted insomniac racked with anxiety about his upcoming concert series: That is how a defense lawyer portrayed Michael Jackson in his last days during opening statements on Tuesday in the involuntary manslaughter trial of the singer’s personal doctor.
Ed Chernoff, the defense lawyer, suggested that Jackson was most responsible for his own death and had, against his doctor’s orders, ingested or injected himself with the prescription drugs that killed him.
“When Dr [Conrad] Murray left the room, Michael Jackson self-administered a dose” of anesthetic, Chernoff said, and that dose, combined with other drugs he had taken, “created a perfect storm in his body that killed him instantly.”
However, prosecutors said that it was the doctor’s negligence, in plying Jackson with large amounts of a powerful anesthetic, that had proved fatal.
The trial, expected to last about five weeks, will hinge on these competing versions of what -happened in the hours just before and after Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009.
The singer had been rehearsing in Los Angeles for “This Is It,” a series of 50 sold-out concerts in London intended to relieve some of his crushing debt. Murray, a Houston cardiologist, had been paid US$150,000 a month to stay with Jackson at least six nights a week and help him get to sleep.
Prosecutors accused Murray of failing to safeguard Jackson in a variety of ways — by administering a powerful anesthetic, -propofol, usually used only at hospitals, and not using proper monitoring equipment, and then “abandoning” Jackson while the doctor used the bathroom, made phone calls and sent e-mail when he should have been keeping a watch over his patient.
In addition, David Walgren, the deputy prosecutor, said Murray failed to call 911 immediately after he found Jackson lifeless in the bed, hid evidence and lied to paramedics and doctors trying to revive the singer about what drugs Jackson had been given.
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