People v. Murray

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People v. Murray
Court	Los Angeles County Superior Court
Full case name	People of the State of California v. Conrad Robert Murray
Decided	November 7, 2011
Verdict	Murray found guilty of involuntary manslaughter
Case history
Subsequent action(s)	Murray was sentenced to four years in prison; he was released on October 28, 2013 after serving 1 year and 11 months.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Michael E. Pastor

People v. Murray (The People of the State of California v. Conrad Robert Murray) was the American criminal trial of Michael Jackson's personal physician, Conrad Murray, who was charged with involuntary manslaughter for the pop singer's death on June 25, 2009, from a dose of the general anesthetic propofol.^[1] The trial, which started on September 27, 2011, was held in the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Los Angeles, California, before Judge Michael Pastor as a televised proceeding, reaching a guilty verdict on November 7, 2011.

The prosecutors in the case, David Walgren and Deborah Brazil,^[2] both Los Angeles deputy district attorneys, in their opening statement told jurors, "misplaced trust in the hands of Murray cost Jackson his life." Murray's defense counsel (Edward Chernoff, Matthew Alford, J. Michael Flanagan and Nareg Gourjian) claimed Jackson, who was tired and under pressure from rehearsing, took eight tablets of lorazepam (Ativan), a sedative. "When Dr. Murray left the room, Jackson self-administered a dose of propofol that, with the lorazepam, created a perfect storm in his body that ultimately killed him. The whole thing is tragic, but the evidence is not that Dr. Murray did it", Chernoff said.^[3] Testimony during the trial showed Murray stayed with Jackson at least six nights a week and was regularly asked—and sometimes begged—by the singer to give him drugs powerful enough to put him to sleep.

Murray told authorities Jackson 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 Jackson's system, had played the key role in his death. In 2011, the jury found Murray guilty after about eight hours of deliberation,^{[4][5][6][7][8]} and he was sentenced to four years in prison, but was released after one year and eleven months on October 28, 2013, owing to prison overcrowding and good behavior.