Jackson Trial: Doctor Guilty in Star’s Death

Dr. Conrad Murray was remanded into custody after the jury returned with a guilty verdict at at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday.

By JENNIFER MEDINA Published: November 7, 2011

LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson, among the most famous performers in pop music history, spent his final days in a sleep-deprived haze of medication and misery until finally succumbing to a fatal dose of potent drugs provided by the private physician he had hired to act as his personal pharmaceutical dispensary, a jury decided on Monday.

The physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter nearly two and a half years after Jackson’s shocking death at age 50. The verdict came after nearly 50 witnesses, 22 days of testimony and less than two days of deliberation by a jury of seven men and five women. The trial had focused primarily on whether Dr. Murray was guilty of abdicating his duty or of acting with reckless criminal negligence, directly causing his patient’s death.

Dr. Murray, 58, faces up to four years in prison and the loss of his medical license. He sat stoically as the verdict was read and did not react as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Judge Michael Pastor ruled that he should be held without bail until his sentencing, set for Nov. 29.

Jackson, who had become a star as a child in Gary, Ind., singing with his siblings in the Jackson 5, grew into one of the best-known performers in the world. Though increasingly eccentric in his later years, often living on a secluded California estate he called Neverland, Jackson always had a fervent core of fans and, despite scandals, his lavish lifestyle and persistent money woes, always seemed just a comeback away from a return to the top.

Hundreds of fans showed their devotion by gathering outside the downtown courthouse throughout the trial — many of them sporting Jackson’s signature single white glove. On Monday, they chanted “Justice, justice” and spent hours after the verdict dancing to his hits, from “Beat It” to “I Want You Back.” Huge crowds had also gathered outside the California court where Jackson was tried, and acquitted, on child molesting charges in 2005.

The singer’s parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson, and siblings La Toya, Jermaine and Randy were in the courtroom for the verdict. The family left the courthouse without speaking to the hordes of reporters gathered outside, simply saying they were “very happy” with the verdict and flashing a thumb.

Dr. Murray, a Houston cardiologist, was paid $150,000 a month to work as Jackson’s personal physician as he rehearsed in Los Angeles for “This Is It,” a series of 50 sold-out concerts in London that he needed to pay off hundreds of millions of dollars in mounting debts.

Testimony showed that Dr. Murray had stayed with Jackson at least six nights a week and was regularly asked — and sometimes begged — by the insomniac singer to give him drugs powerful enough to put him to sleep. Jackson, Dr. Murray told the authorities, was especially eager to be administered propofol, a surgical anesthetic that put him to sleep when other powerful sedatives could not. Testimony indicated that propofol, in conjunction with other drugs in the singer’s system, had played the key role in his death on June 25, 2009.

Prosecutors tried to paint Dr. Murray as a money-hungry physician who would do things no reputable doctor would do — including improperly and recklessly administering an anesthetic normally given only in a hospital. The full retinue of drugs given to Jackson while he was under Dr. Murray’s care was so beyond normal practice, prosecutors said, that it amounted to a “pharmaceutical experiment.”

For its part, the defense tried to portray Jackson as a man so desperate to make his comeback concerts a success that he was willing to take wild chances and grew terrified that he would not be able to perform to his own exacting standards without more rest and less stress.

The morning Jackson died, Dr. Murray told investigators during a recording played in State Superior Court here, the singer told him, “Just make me sleep; it doesn’t matter what happens.”

When Jackson died, he was more than $400 million in debt, but since his death, his estate has prospered, generating more than $310 million and paying off most of his debts.

The estate has struck several lucrative deals, including a movie, video games, a new recording contract and two productions by Cirque du Soleil.