Dr. Conrad Murray has started his bid to clear his name.
The former physician of the late Michael Jackson has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and a Los Angeles court began to hear yesterday from his defence team.
The prosecution rested its case after calling anaesthesiologist Dr. Steven Shafer to the stand for the fifth day.
He testified that it was not scientifically possible for Jackson to have killed himself the way that Murray claims.
Dr. Shafer maintained that, in his professional opinion, the only way that the Thriller star could have died from acute Propofol intoxication on June 25 2009, was if it had been administered via an intravenous drip.
Dr. Shafer stated that it was impossible for Jackson to have self-administered to the Propofol that led to his death.
He said that the powerful drug continued to enter Jackson’s body even after his heart had stopped beating and claims that Murray gave his patient 40 times more Propofol than he had admitted to authorities.
But when cross examined by defence attorney Ed Chernoff, Dr. Shafer admitted that it was just speculation on what occurred in the hours leading up to Jackson’s death because Murray had kept no medical records.
“You were not able to find a scenario that could explain the blood levels and also self-injection?” Deputy District Attorney David Walgren asked Dr. Shafer to which he answered, “Correct.”
The prosecution has called 33 witnesses over the past four weeks since the beginning of the trial including a plethora of medical experts who claimed that Murray acted in an unprofessional and negligent way.
The defence team’s first witness was Beverly Hills Police official, Donna Norris, who detailed the call made from Jackson’s last home in Holmby Hills to the emergency services for an ambulance to be sent.
Their second person to the stand was Los Angeles Police Department surveillance specialist Alex Suppall who testified that he only gave a few minutes of surveillance footage to investigators which showed Jackson arriving home for the last time around 12.45am on the morning of his death.
Murray’s lawyers ascertain that the LAPD did a poor job getting evidence from the cameras at Jackson’s home and did not make important copies of tapes before they were wiped off.
Investigators apparently only had a small part of the surveillance tape from the fateful day and because it ran on a 24-hour loop, Supall said that if the tape had not been transferred in time, it would have been replaced with new footage and would be impossible to retrieve.
Supall said he only copied over the few minutes from when the father-of-three returned home from his rehearsal for the This Is It Tour but Murray’s lawyers wanted to see who else entered Jackson’s home and could have had access to Jackson’s belongings.
LAPD detectives Dan Myers and Orlando Martinez were questioned about the testimony of Jackson’s bodyguard Alberto Alvarez.
Myers told that court that Alvarez did not tell detectives that he had been instructed by Murray to put Propofol bottles and a saline bag away before the emergency team arrived as he later claimed.
Martinez testified that Alvarez may have been influenced by press reports after his initial interview with police.
Murray faces up to four years in prison and having his medical licence revoked if found guilty of the charges to which he has pleaded innocent.
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