Back to Court

The world is a stage and at this point one of the acts is the Conrad Murray trial. The prosecution will probably rest today, Dr. Steve Shaffer is their last witness. Dr. Shaffer is an expert anesthesiologist who has worked with all kinds of drugs in the hospital.  He is not charging a fee for his testimony, as is customary, because he feels like the bad publicity about propofal is dangerous to the care of patients. He is doing this to reassure the public that in the right setting and with the right care giver the drug is very safe.  He mentioned in his testimony that since Michael Jacksons death he has been repeatedly asked by his patients if the was "giving them the drug that killed Michael Jackson.   Dr. Shaffer has testified that Dr. Murray was grossly negligent in giving Michael Jackson propofal. Had he had the proper equipment and training in anesthesia he would have been able to resuscitate Jackson quickly and easily. He has debunked the defense theory that Michael Jackson drank the porpofal causing his own death while the doctor was out of the room for a few minutes. It seems orally ingesting the drug has no effect. Last week the defense announced that they were abandoning that line of reasoning.

I think that the prosecution is proving that Dr. Murray was responsible for Michael Jacksons death but not because of an overdose of porpofal, which is listed as the cause of death.  It seems to me that Dr. Murray was not prepared with the proper monitoring devices nor did he have the knowledge to handle the drug. It seems to me that this is a case of malpractice which led to a death. I suppose that this is technically a case of involuntary manslaughter, but it seems that event the amount of propofal that Jackson had been taking daily was not the actual cause of his death.  It appears to me that he died from not monitoring the patient properly to intervene when a negative side effect showed up.  Basically it seems that Jackson got so relaxed that he stopped breathing.  Dr. Shaffer said that happens almost daily when he administers anesthetics. If you have the right knowledge and equipment is it easily and quickly corrected with no damage to the patient. 

I am so glad that I am not on this jury, if for no other reason than I am able to form opinions and talk about the case before it is presented in total. Most of the fun of a trial are the twists and turns it takes and how opinions change from the testimony.

The defense case will be short and this will probably go to the jury in a week or so.  I doubt that Dr. Murray will actually go to jail because of the California over crowded prison system.  He will, I am most certain have his license taken and will probably never practice medicine again.  That is probably a good thing since he did not seem very capable in this situation.

As you were,

Jay