Michael Jackson was already dead well before paramedics got to him, and his personal doctor said nothing about having given the star a powerful sedative that killed him, medics said.
Murray is accused of involuntary manslaughter over the icon’s shock death on June 25, 2009. Prosecutors say he administered an overdose of the powerful sedative propofol to help Jackson sleep, and then tried to cover it up.
On the third day of testimony, paramedic Martin Blount said that when he arrived Jackson seemed to have been dead for at least 20 minutes, despite Murray’s claim that he had stopped breathing a minute before they were called.
“It seemed like he’d been down for a little while” as his skin was cold and his eyes fixed and dilated, he told the court, which is began an expected two weeks of pre-trial hearings on Tuesday. His comments backed up testimony by fellow paramedic Richard Senneff, who estimated that the popstar had stopped breathing from 20 minutes to an hour before the emergency medics arrived.
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Drug charges on Anna Nicole beau dropped
Los Angeles: A judge on Thursday quashed drugs-related charges against the boyfriend of late model Anna Nicole Smith, who died of an overdose four years ago. The Los Angeles judge said there was insufficient evidence to justify the convictions of Howard K. Stern, and all but one conviction against psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich.
Forty-one year-old Stern, Smith’s longtime lawyer and boyfriend, was found guilty last October on two conspiracy counts relating to using a false name to secure prescription drugs for the late Playboy model.
Eroshevich, 62, was convicted of four counts of fraudulently obtaining medication when prescribing drugs under false names to the starlet, who died in February 2007. But judge Robert J. Perry of the LA Superior Court on Thursday dropped all charges against Stern, and all but one against Eroshevich.
—AFP