the Informer

Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray was charged at the Los Angeles County Courthouse on Monday with involuntary manslaughter after the pop star’s death last June due to a lethal combination of prescription drugs.

The judge presiding over the new celebrity courtroom drama is Keith L. Schwartz. During the hearing, Schwartz stated that Murray acted “without due caution and circumspection” and “did unlawfully and without malice, kill, Michael Joseph Jackson.”

As Doctor Conrad Murray approached the courthouse, legions of Jackson fans were there screaming “murderer” as he made his way up the courthouse steps.

Doctor Murray was with Jackson at his L.A. home at the time of his death. Murray confirmed reports that he provided Jackson with propofol to help the singer sleep.

Propofol is most commonly used as an anesthetic drug to sedate patients during surgeries, although it can be used in the home in certain monitored instances.

The main force of the case relies on the idea that Murray played “fast and loose with the requirements for administering propofol,” says Robert Pugsley, a professor at Southwestern Law School in L.A. according to the LA Times.

The charge against Murray is based off of the assumption that his “conduct demonstrated no intent to cause death to his patient, but that his prescribing and administration practices were far worse than breaches of the standard of care, and rose to the level of actionable criminal negligence if not, possibly, reckless conduct,” stated Bruce Cranner according to the Minnesota Post, who is a member of the Medical Liability Committee of DRI, which is the biggest US civil defense attorney association.

Judge Schwartz set Murray’s bail at $75,000. If convicted Murray will be facing up to four years in jail.

The case against Murray relies largely on the specifics that the autopsy will provide, however the autopsy will remain top secret until the trial.

One of the main factors to this trial will remain with the almost impossible task of finding potential jurors.

Just like the O.J. Simpson trial many years ago, attorney’s will be sifting through hundreds, if not thousands of potential jurors and hopefully scrounging up a few that aren’t well versed with the logistics of this case. This will be a daring feat seeing as Jackson’s death was all over the place last summer.

While many are concerned over the fate of Conrad Murray, question still remains whether he is truly the one to blame in this situation. We all remember the “accidental deaths” of Brittany Murphy and Heath Ledger.

They both were found to have a cocktail of prescription drugs found in their systems during their autopsies. Nobody was questioning the “accidental” label on these deaths, yet there was obviously someone providing the drugs for them as well.

Even if The King of Pop wasn’t provided with these drugs by Murray, whose to say he wouldn’t have gone out and found an anonymous footman to help him doctor-shop and self medicate himself to death elsewhere.

Jackson’s death is being called a homicide because he was provided with these pills by an identified source that was there at the time of death, so he get’s to serve four years in prison for it.

With these deaths being of such high profile celebrities, it’s only right to state that it was not their intent to kill themselves, but with death being the final result, it’s hardly fair to call it anything other then an “accident” including Jackson’s case.

Conrad Murray will most likely be facing jail time, yet he was just a pawn in a prescription drug addict’s game that unfortunately ended up taking his life.