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Jacksons v AEG Timeline Legal Top Stories
Murray defense to say Jackson committed suicide
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 7 April 2011
So, did Michael Jackson commit suicide? Well, lawyers for Dr Conrad Murray suggested that he might have done in a US court yesterday. Doc Murray, of course, is accused of killing Jackson by negligently administering the drug Propofol the morning the king of pop died back in 2009. Murray denies the charges.
There were indications last month that Murray’s legal team might suggest that Jackson gave himself an extra shot of propofol the morning he died, resulting in his death. And yesterday Murray’s legal man Ed Chernoff suggested Jacko might have done so to deliberately end his own life, as he panicked about the scale of his debts and the stresses of the ‘This Is It’ project on which he was relying so much to keep creditors at bay.
Chernoff told a pre-court hearing: “The crux of the defence is going to be that Michael Jackson engaged in a desperate act and took desperate measures that caused his death. We believe at the time Michael Jackson died he was a desperate man in relation to his financial affairs”. To that end Chernoff requested access to the late pop star’s finances, though Howard Weitzman, legal rep for the Jacko estate, objected to that request, and the judge agreed there was no need for Team Murray to get their hands on the accounts.
Meanwhile Deputy District Attorney David Walgren, speaking for the prosecution, said the suggestion Jackson committed suicide was “an irrelevant sideshow” aimed at distracting the jury from the real issues in this case.
