Jacksons v AEG Timeline Legal Top Stories

Full four year sentence for Conrad Murray

By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 30 November 2011

Dr Conrad Murray was yesterday sentenced to four years in jail for the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson, the longest possible sentence for the crime.

Prior to the sentencing, the prosecution delivered a lengthy statement calling for Judge Michael Pastor to hand the doctor the maximum sentence. Deputy District Attorney David Walgren detailed all of Murray’s various failings in his treatment of the late king of pop, who died from on overdose of the surgical anaesthetic propofol, which Murray was administering to the singer in a domestic setting, with no monitoring equipment, as a cure for insomnia. Various experts told the court during the doctor’s trial that using propofol outside of a hospital and without constant patient monitoring was grossly negligent.

The prosecution also focused on Murray’s seeming efforts to cover his tracks after Jackson stopped breathing, hiding equipment that would have shown he had been administering the propofol, and failing to tell paramedics or staff at the hospital Jackson was taken to about the drug. Prosecutors noted the Conrad Murray TV documentary, shown shortly after his trial, in which the doctor said he didn’t tell other medical staff about the propofol because he didn’t believe it was relevant. This, Walgren implied, was either lies, or another act of gross negligence.

With Conrad Murray again waiving his right to speak, his defence attorney, Ed Chernoff, took to the stand to deliver an emotional plea for leniency, seemingly going into much more detail about his client’s life than even he himself expected. Yes Murray had been negligent in his treatment of Jackson, Chernoff conceded, but didn’t the 56 years of his client’s life prior to the crime count for anything, the lawyer asked: the clean slate, the academic successes against the odds, the grateful patients, the pro bono work for the poor community.

Arguing that his client was not a danger to society, and that he would be punished enough through the revocation of his medical licence, and by being labelled as “the man who killed Michael Jackson” for the rest of his life, Chernoff questioned whether locking Murray up was really necessary. Surely probation, and putting Murray to use through some sort of community service programme, was better for everyone that seeing this man locked up in a small cell?

But Pastor did not concur. Despite insisting that he had indeed considered the “whole book of Murray’s life”, the judge delivered a damning final statement, portraying Murray as a greedy man who shunned his duties as a doctor to please a rich client. Though it seemed that possibly the biggest factor in convincing Pastor that Murray should be denied probation and serve a full four year sentence was the aforementioned TV documentary.

The judge seemed mightily pissed off that Murray, having waived his right to testify in court, had chosen to give his side of the story to the TV cameras. On several occasions Pastor noted that Murray had shown no remorse – nor accepted any responsibility – for Jackson’s death on the TV programme. “Not only isn’t there any remorse”, the judge told the court room, “there’s umbrage and outrage on the part of Dr Murray against the decedent”. After the damning summing up, that the judge denied probation and handed Murray the full four years in jail came as no surprise.

One issue relating to the case remains unresolved though, that being restitution. Pastor said that the Jackson family were due restitution for their loss, but that with the MJ Estate claiming that the cancellation of the ‘This Is It’ tour alone cost the singer’s children over $100 million, that he would need more information regarding the prosecution’s restitution claim than the three line statement from the Estate so far submitted to court.

Chernoff agreed with the judge that the defence would need a full break down of any restitution claim, though he added that there was no way Murray would ever be able to pay those kind of figures, implying that a $100 million claim would therefore be pointless. Of course you could argue that the Michael Jackson catalogue and name is much more valuable to his children and family now he’s dead than it was when he was still alive, though that would probably be a brave argument to field in court. A restitution hearing was scheduled for January.

Outside the court Katherine Jackson welcomed the sentencing, telling reporters that “four years is not enough for someone’s life – it won’t bring [Michael] back – but at least he [Murray] got the maximum sentence”. Meanwhile Chernoff’s colleague on the defence team, Michael Flanagan, said he felt Pastor had been “openly hostile” to Murray from the word go, but conceded that Murray choosing not to testify was probably a mistake, adding to that hostility.

The Murray team now have 60 days to decide whether to appeal. Meanwhile there has been much speculation about just how long the doctor will actually spend behind bars, given how overcrowded the Californian jails are just now, and the fact that Murray’s crime is non-violent. Some reckon he could be moved to a house arrest scenario within a few months.