Conrad Murray has been sentenced to four years in jail for involuntary manslaughter in connection with Michael Jackson’s 2009 death.

On Tuesday morning, Judge Michael Pastor handed down the maximum sentence possible for the charge. It is unclear how much of the four-year sentence Murray will actually end up serving in Los Angeles County Jail, but he was credited 46 days for time served and good behavior.

Prosecutor David Walgren had sought incarceration because he argued that Murray submitted Jackson to a “pharmaceutical experiment” and “the defendant was playing Russian roulette with Michael Jackson’s life every single night.”

He also focused on one of the comments Murray made in a documentary that aired after the trial. In it, according to Walgren, nine days before he was convicted, Murray was asked if he felt guilty for what he had done and he responded, “I don’t feel guilty because I did not do anything wrong.”

A statement read by a representative for Jackson’s family at the sentencing requested a “sentence that reminds physicians that they cannot sell their services to the highest bidder.”

Defense attorney Ed Chernoff focused on Murray’s life prior to his two months as Jackson’s personal physician, pointing out all of the other people he helped and saved during his career in medicine. He submitted 35 letters of recommendation and support from friends, family and former patients.

“Does any of that matter to the court at all?” Chernoff asked.

In delivering the sentence, Pastor said that Murray’s treatment, or lack of treatment, of Jackson is more significant than the good deeds he did prior to that. He said one piece of evidence that stood out to him was the recording Murray made of Jackson apparently under the influence of drugs that was played early in the trial, which he called a “horrific violation of trust.”

He also said it did not appear from Murray’s comments that he had any remorse about what happened and that makes him “dangerous.”

“Why give probation to someone who is offended by the whole idea that that person is even before the court?” he asked.

He said the maximum punishment was necessary because the “experimental medicine” and “money-for-medicine madness” that Murray engaged in with Jackson cannot be tolerated.

The issue of restitution to Jackson’s family will be dealt with at a later hearing because the judge and defense wanted more information about the more than $100 million that prosecutors were seeking.

Conrad Murray was handcuffed and taken into custody in the courtroom on Monday after a jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s June 25, 2009 death.

Sentencing was set for November 29. Murray faces up to four years in prison.

At the request of prosecutor David Walgren, Murray was ordered held without bond until his sentencing despite defense attorney Ed Chernoff’s arguments that he is not a flight risk and has family obligations to take care of.

The judge cited several factors in his decision, the primary one being the protection of the public. Since Murray has now been “convicted of a crime involving homicide,” Judge Michael Pastor said his “reckless conduct” demonstrated a potential risk to the public.

Pastor also pointed to Murray’s ties outside the state of California and said that, while Murray has attended all of his court dates so far, he is not certain he will show up for his sentencing now that he is a convicted felon.

A verdict has been reached at Conrad Murray’s trial for involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s death.

In Session’s Michael Christian reported that the jury buzzed three times—the signal that they have a verdict—at 10:56 am PT after more than 10 hours of deliberations over two days. It is expected to be read in court at 1 pm PT/4 pm ET.

Will the jury reach a verdict on Friday in Conrad Murray’s trial for Michael Jackson’s death or will they be coming back on Monday?

As deliberations continued into their sixth hour and Katherine Jackson returned to the courthouse area for unknown reasons on Friday afternoon, Nancy Grace laid out some of the factors that may contribute to the amount of time this jury will take.

First, Grace suggested that the fact that the victim is a celebrity could extend deliberations. Also, she said that juries in California tend to take longer than those in other states, and their decisions are sometimes unexpected.

“California is always a longer deliberation…It very often will turn out exactly the way you don’t think it will,” Grace said on HLN Friday.

Still, the fact that it is a Friday and this trial has already run on for several weeks could be weighing on jurors.

FULL POST

A cardiologist testifying at the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor said Wednesday that Conrad Murray’s treatment of Jackson was “unethical” and that there were multiple extreme deviations from proper standards of care that he felt made Murray responsible for the singer’s death.

Dr. Alon Steinberg pointed to six deviations from standards that he considered examples of “gross negligence” on Murray’s part. First was the use of the anesthetic propofol to put Jackson to sleep at all. The second was doing it in Jackson’s home without the proper equipment or staffing.

Steinberg’s third deviation was that Murray did not appear to have been prepared for an emergency. Fourth, Murray did not follow proper protocols after Jackson went into cardiac and respiratory arrest. Fifth was the delay in calling 911, which he said Murray should have done immediately. Finally, he noted that Murray did not maintain medical records for Jackson.

“You put all of those together,” Steinberg testified, “yes, he’s responsible.”

Steinberg, one of the final witnesses prosecutors plan to call in their case, repeatedly insisted that Jackson could have been saved if Murray had sought help within minutes of finding Jackson in arrest.

However, all of Steinberg’s testimony was based on the information Murray provided in his interview with police days after Jackson’s death. Testimony at the trial has already indicated that at least some of the details of the timeline Murray gave at the time were inaccurate.
FULL POST

Jurors at Conrad Murray’s trial are expected to hear his version of the events surrounding Michael Jackson’s death in his own words for the first time Friday when his police interview is introduced into evidence in court.

Media reports indicate that one of the detectives who questioned Murray on June 27, 2009—two days after Jackson’s death—could be called to the witness stand Friday to testify about the interview. Some details of Murray’s statements have been revealed in previous hearings, but the full two-hour recording has never been released.

At a January 2011 hearing, Los Angeles Police Det. Orlando Martinez testified that Murray told investigators he had tried to wean Jackson off of using propofol as a sleep aid, but the singer “pressured” him to continue providing it. Martinez said Murray also told them that he did not learn about Jackson’s use of propofol until after he took the job as his personal physician.

Murray reportedly told detectives that he left Jackson alone for a couple of minutes to use the bathroom around 11:00 am on June 25, 2009 and Jackson was not breathing when he returned. Murray said that he did not call 911 immediately because he busy caring for Jackson. Testimony at the trial so far has indicated that this may have all happened closer to noon.

In a February 2010 interview with RadarOnline.com, defense attorney Michael Flanagan acknowledged that Murray’s initial timeline was wrong.

“Doctors make mistakes, and that is what he did, and it was simply just that, a mistake,” Flanagan said.

Before Murray’s interview with police is played in court, however, the defense will continue cross examination of Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office toxicologist Dan Anderson about the drugs found in Jackson’s body during his autopsy.

On Thursday, Flanagan questioned Anderson about the level of lorazepam in Jackson’s stomach being higher than that in his blood, but Anderson said that was not necessarily consistent with the defense theory that Jackson ingested the drug orally. Anderson said it is possible the lorazepam in the stomach could have come from his blood or from oral absorption.

Defense attorney Ed Chernoff had suggested in his opening statement that Jackson may have self-administered propofol and swallowed several lorazepam pills without Murray’s knowledge.

Jackson’s autopsy listed “acute propofol intoxication” as the cause of his death. Prosecutors have alleged that Murray is responsible for giving Jackson the drugs and failing to treat him adequately afterward. If convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Murray could face up to four years in prison.

A coroner’s office investigator denied a defense allegation that she made a “substantial number of mistakes” while collecting and recording evidence from Michael Jackson’s house after his death.

Los Angeles Coroner’s Office investigator Elissa Fleak began the day Thursday at Conrad Murray’s trial by continuing to identify pieces of evidence collected from Jackson’s home. She also testified that medical records provided by Murray regarding his treatment of Jackson did not include anything about the day he died or the prior three months.

On cross examination, defense attorney Ed Chernoff pointed out some apparent inconsistencies and omissions in Fleak’s records. Her initial notes did not indicate that a propofol bottle was found inside an IV bag, but her revised notes did. She also did not photograph the bottle in the bag before removing it.

In addition, Chernoff noted that she moved one bottle of medication before photographing it, that her notes said gloves were found on the floor when photos showed them on a chair and that she left a fingerprint on one of the syringes found in the room. Fleak also acknowledged that she did not collect and test a juice bottle that was on Jackson’s night stand with some of the bottles of prescription drugs.

On redirect, prosecutor David Walgren asked if Fleak had ever conducted what she considered a perfect investigation and she said no.

After Fleak testified, Walgren read a stipulation that fingerprint analysis was conducted on many of the vials and pieces of medical equipment found in Jackson’s room and only the propofol bottle found in the saline bag had Conrad Murray’s prints on it. Of the other items where prints were detected, Michael Jackson, Murray and several of Jackson’s employees were all eliminated as possible sources.

Walgren began to review results of toxicology testing on Jackson’s body with coroner’s office toxicologist Dan Anderson before Thursday’s lunch break. Anderson was expected back on the stand in the afternoon.

Six weeks before Michael Jackson’s death, his doctor recorded him rambling in a slow, slurred voice about the importance of his planned “This Is It” concert series and the pain of his lost childhood, prosecutors alleged Wednesday.

In a four-minute recording recovered from Conrad Murray’s iPhone by DEA forensic computer examiners, Jackson was heard talking about building “Michael Jackson’s Children’s Hospital” with the proceeds from the concerts. Prosecutor David Walgren had played a portion of it in his opening statement, but jurors listened to the whole tape Wednesday during the testimony of forensic examiner Stephen Marx.

“Elvis didn't do it. Beatles didn't do it,” Jackson said while Walgren has suggested he was under the influence of some unknown drugs. “We have to be phenomenal. When people leave this show, when people leave my show, I want them to say, ‘I've never seen nothing like this in my life. Go. Go. I've never seen nothing like this. Go. It's amazing. He's the greatest entertainer in the world.’”

He continued talking about how children in hospitals are depressed because they have “no game room, no movie theater. They’re sick because they’re depressed.”

“God wants me to do it,” he said of building his own children’s hospital. “I’m gonna do it, Conrad.”

It was not clear why Murray recorded the conversation, which was timestamped at 9:05 am on May 10, 2009.

“Don't have enough hope, no more hope,” Jackson went on in the recording. “That's the next generation that's gonna save our planet, starting with - we'll talk about it. United States, Europe, Prague, my babies. They walk around with no mother. They drop them off, they leave - a psychological degradation of that. They reach out to me - please take me with you.”

Sounding like his strength was fading, Jackson said that he wrote songs like “Heal the World” and “We Are the World” for children “because I didn’t have a childhood. I had no childhood. I feel their pain. I can deal with it...These are the songs I’ve written because I hurt, you know. I hurt.”

Asked by the other person on the recording—believed to be Murray—if he was okay, Jackson was silent for several seconds before responding, “I am asleep.”

While on the witness stand, Marx also identified a voicemail message recovered from Murray’s phone where Jackson’s manager Frank Dileo said on June 20, 2009 that the signer was sick after having an “episode” the previous night.

“Um, I think you need to get a blood test on him today,” Dileo said five days before Jackson’s death. “Uh, we gotta see what he's doing.”

Murray’s phone also contained several emails related to a British insurance agent’s request for copies of Jackson’s medical records. In one, written on the morning of the day Jackson died, Murray stated that news reports of the singer suffering from serious illnesses and injuries were “fallacious.”

The morning’s other witness, an account representative for Seacoast Medical, detailed many supplies ordered by Conrad Murray’s office between March and June 2009. Sally Hirschberg testified that it “raised a red flag” for her when Murray’s assistant wanted an April 2009 order to be shipped to a residential address in California because his previous orders had all been sent to his Las Vegas office.

Testimony continues Wednesday afternoon.

Three girlfriends of Conrad Murray took the stand Tuesday as prosecutors tried to portray the doctor as distracted by his personal life when he should have been monitoring his patient, Michael Jackson, to whom he was administering extremely powerful sedatives.

Testimony zeroed in on calls made on June 25, 2009, the day Jackson died from “acute propofol intoxication,” according to his autopsy. The judge limited the prosecution’s ability to question the women about their personal relationships with Murray outside the context of that date.

Particularly significant testimony came from Sade Anding, a Houston cocktail waitress with whom prosecutors alleged Murray may have been on the phone when he noticed Jackson was unresponsive. Anding received a call from Murray at 11:51 am on June 25. About fix or six minutes into that conversation, Anding said Murray stopped speaking and it sounded like the phone was in his pocket as she heard mumbling and coughing for several minutes before she hung up.

On cross examination, Anding acknowledged that she did not know whether the coughing was coming from Jackson.

That call would have ended a few minutes before the time that Jackson’s chef, Kai Chase, testified previously Murray came downstairs frantically seeking help, and about 20 minutes before one of Jackson’s security guards called 911 at Murray’s request.

Another girlfriend, Nicole Alvarez—who had a child with Murray in March 2009—testified about the excitement of meeting Michael Jackson when he was Murray’s patient. She also confirmed that Murray had several packages delivered to her apartment between April and June of that year.

Alvarez said she did not open those packages or ask Murray what was in them, but Las Vegas pharmacist Tim Lopez testified that he sent a total of 225 propofol vials, containing approximately four gallons of the drug, to Murray at her address during that time, along with supplies of several other drugs.

Alvarez received a call from Murray on June 25, 2009 while he was in the ambulance transporting Jackson to the hospital. She said he called because he did not want her to be alarmed when she heard what happened on the news.

Another woman, Michelle Bella, who met Murray at a Las Vegas social club in 2008, testified that she received a text message from him on the morning of June 25, but the judge did not allow the jury to hear what was in the message.

Testimony at Murray’s trial for involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s death continues Wednesday.

An emergency room doctor who testified Friday that Michael Jackson was “clinically dead” when he arrived at UCLA Medical Center on June 25, 2009 returned to the stand Monday morning to provide more details about the treatment Jackson received at the hospital.

Dr. Richelle Cooper said that she decided at 2:26 pm to pronounce Jackson dead, but she had never felt a pulse during the entire time she was working on him. Cooper testified that she felt comfortable pronouncing him dead much earlier while in radio communication with the paramedics who were still treating him at his home, but Conrad Murray insisted on not giving up at that point and claimed he found a pulse.

She stated Monday that, in retrospect, there was no chance of reviving Jackson by the time he got to the hospital.

Murray, Jackson’s personal doctor at the time, is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in connection with Jackson’s death. Prosecutors allege that he gave Jackson a fatal dose of the sedative propofol and that he failed to seek help quickly enough when Jackson became non-responsive.

Like the paramedics who testified last week, Cooper said Murray never mentioned to her that he gave Jackson propofol. On cross examination, however, she said that information would not have altered her treatment of Jackson or the result. She added that she believed Jackson was dead long before he became her patient.

Cooper also testified that Jackson’s children were “hysterical” and crying when they learned of his death at the hospital.

Another doctor who treated Jackson at UCLA, Dr. Thao Nguyen, also testified Monday that the failed effort to save Jackson was not a matter of “too little, too late,” but it was simply too late.

Employees of AT&T and Sprint testified about Murray’s cell phone records from June 25, 2009, identifying several calls that were made in the hours before and after Jackson’s death.