Jackson’s trial carries on

LOS ANGELES:

In the court trial on October 7, Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, claimed he was trying to wean the singer off the drug that killed him.

In a police interview recorded days after the King of Pop’s death, Murray insisted he was away from Jackson’s bedside for only two minutes on June 25, 2009 when the star stopped breathing. “Three days before his death, I started to wean Jackson from propofol,” Murray had said.

But he added, “He fought me on it,” explaining how Jackson told him that previous doctors had helped him to sleep 15 to 18 hours at a stretch using propofol — an anaesthetic — to battle his chronic insomnia.

In the interview, the doctor described spending an entire night trying to get the star to sleep, with a series of drug injections. Jackson had returned to his LA mansion from a rehearsal shortly after midnight, and Murray began with two milligrams (mg) of lorazapam, after a valium pill had no effect.

About an hour later he gave him a dose of another sedative, midazolam, but that also failed to put Jackson to sleep. At 5 am, Jackson, who was still “wide awake”, began complaining that he would be unable to rehearse that day. “I’ve got to sleep, Dr Conrad. You know I can’t function if I don’t get the sleep,” he quoted the singer as telling him, adding that gave him another dose of midazolam around 7:30 am.

Shortly after 10 am, Jackson began asking for his “milk” — propofol — saying, “Please give me some milk, so I can sleep.” At around 10:40 am he gave him 25mg of propofol and the singer went to sleep. “I watched him for a long enough period. Then I needed to go to the bathroom so I was gone for about two minutes. Then I came back to his bedside and was stunned that he wasn’t breathing.”

Murray said he had been told how much Jackson loved propofol by a fellow doctor who had also treated the star for insomnia. “’He loves that drug,’” he quoted the doctor, David Adams, as saying. In a remark which the defense may highlight, Murray recalled how Jackson himself said he would “love” to push the syringe to administer the propofol into his body.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2011.