Jacksons v AEG Timeline Legal

Murray says courts should have considered Jackson’s state of mind

By | Published on Thursday 23 February 2012

Conrad Murray

Conrad Murray, the doctor last year convicted of causing the death of Michael Jackson through negligence, has filed new papers with the courts in which he says it was unfair for the judge in his trial to not allow any discussion on the late king of pop’s state of mind in the weeks before his untimely demise.

Jackson died, of course, as a result of an overdose of the anaesthetic propofol, which Murray was giving the singer as a cure for insomnia. Key to the doctor’s defence was the theory that Jackson self-administered the fatal shot of the drug, either in a desperate bid to induce sleep, or maybe even to end his own life.

Although the defence presented one expert to discuss how self-administration of the drug might have occurred, the prosecution’s witnesses said that theory was implausible and, anyway, even if Jackson had injected the fatal shot himself, the doctor would still have been negligent for allowing the medication to be within the patient’s reach while he was on his own.

But, according to TMZ, Murray, who is planning to appeal both his conviction and four year jail sentence, is still sticking to the self-administration theory, and claims the court failed to consider that Jackson was in a mixed up state of mind in the weeks before he died, because of financial stresses and the pressures of the planned ‘This Is It’ London residency, and that that would have motivated a desperate act. None of which counters the ‘it’s negligent to leave drugs near your patient’ charge, but whatever.

In court papers seen by TMZ, Team Murray reportedly claim: “Mr Jackson was in debt approximately $440 million and desperately needed to fulfil a contractual commitment at The O2 arena in London.  He was on the verge of losing his entire estate to foreclosure. The pressure to fight through his insomnia, to rehearse and be the entertainer he was in his earlier years was overwhelming. His motivation and resulting desperation were relevant to show a likelihood or reason to act in a manner inconsistent with good judgment”.

The LA courts will consider tomorrow Murray’s application to serve his sentence under house arrest, rather than in jail, while he prepares his appeal. The prosecution in the case have issued a strong objection to that application.



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