Conrad Murray

If Michael Jackson's doctor had acted more like a medical professional and less like a domestic, the singer would be alive today, a prosecution expert testified Wednesday at the physician's trial. The witness, an anesthesiologist who specializes in the drug that killed Jackson, told jurors that an improper "employer-employee" relationship between the singer and Dr. Conrad Murray, who was paid $150,000 a month, directly led to the singer's fatal overdose. "Dr. Murray should have said, 'Michael Jackson, I am not giving you propofol.

The sensational result in the O.J. Simpson murder case notwithstanding, it's an article of faith among criminal defense attorneys that sequestered jurors are more prone to convict than those who go home when the trial recesses for the day. That's why more notice should have been paid this week when J. Michael Flanagan, who is defending Conrad Murray — the physician charged with causing the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson — asked Superior...

The star medical expert for Michael Jackson's physician began his testimony Thursday with the acknowledgment that not even he could explain the doctor's treatment of the pop star. "Let's deal with the elephant in the room here," a defense attorney said to Dr. Paul White, the most important and probably final witness for the physician. "Conrad Murray has been accused of infusing a dose of propofol and leaving his patient. Can you justify that?" "Absolutely not," White replied.

There were only two people in Michael Jackson's bedroom the morning he stopped breathing: the singer and the doctor now on trial in his death. But prosecutors suggested another source of information Monday: Dr. Conrad Murray's cellphones. Records presented as Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial entered its second week showed the doctor used a pair of cellphones to talk to and text patients, his daughter, a love interest and others in the period leading up to Jackson's overdose.

Michael Jackson's personal physician, the target of a police manslaughter investigation, released a video Tuesday thanking his patients and friends for their support. Las Vegas cardiologist Conrad Murray's remarks in the one-minute video posted on YouTube are his first public comments since the pop icon's death on June 25. In the video, a somber-looking Murray briefly refers to interviews he gave Los Angeles police detectives, saying, "I told the truth and I have faith the truth will prevail."

Prosecutors investigating Michael Jackson's death have called the girlfriend of the singer's personal doctor to testify before a grand jury today, according to the woman's lawyer and sources familiar with the matter. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office is asking the grand jury only to take testimony from Nicole Alvarez and that the panel is not being asked "at this time" to determine whether Dr. Conrad Murray should be charged with a crime, the sources said. Murray has been identified in court papers as the target of a manslaughter probe related to Jackson's death, and the sources told The Times that his girlfriend, a 27-year-old actress, has not been cooperating with detectives.

As their case against Michael Jackson's physician neared its end, prosecutors called to the stand medical experts who told jurors of the dangers of the potent surgical anesthetic used by Dr. Conrad Murray to get his famous patient to sleep. Jurors on Thursday heard from the prosecution's final witness in Murray's involuntary manslaughter trial, Dr. Steven Shafer, a leading expert on the anesthetic propofol who devised the dosing guidelines for the drug when it was first introduced.

A judge stripped Dr. Conrad Murray of his state medical license Tuesday after ruling that prosecutors have sufficient evidence to try him for manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor said testimony presented during a six-day hearing into Murray's treatment of the pop icon had convinced him that allowing the cardiologist to keep his license "would constitute an imminent danger to public safety. " Evidence presented by prosecutors, the judge said, showed "a direct nexus and connection between the acts and omissions of Dr. Murray and the homicide in this case," Pastor said.

As the trial of the Houston cardiologist accused of causing Michael Jackson's overdose death gets underway Tuesday, the doctor's attorneys are preparing to argue that the blame should be pointed at the other person who was in the room: the King of Pop himself. Jackson may have injected the lethal dose, or drunk it, attorneys for Dr. Conrad Murray have suggested. It may have been out of financial desperation, pressure to perform or anxiety about his career comeback, they've said. Blaming the patient for his or her own death, legal experts say, is a common defense in the small but growing number of cases of doctors charged in connection with overdose deaths, where a patient's desperate search for drugs collides with a physician's responsibilities.

A lawyer for Michael Jackson's physician attacked the testimony of an important prosecution witness Thursday, suggesting his damning account of the doctor's actions was physically impossible and influenced by offers of huge sums from tabloids. The witness, security guard Alberto Alvarez, is key to the prosecution's theory that Dr. Conrad Murray delayed calling for an ambulance for Jackson in order to hide evidence that the doctor had given the singer the dangerous surgical anesthetic propofol and other drugs.