If Michael Jackson died from a lethal level of the powerful anesthetic propofol, then his personal physician would have had to inject much more of the drug than he reportedly told police, medical experts said.

That opinion is based on court records unsealed in Houston on Monday in which Los Angeles police detectives recount Dr. Conrad Murray’s statement to them after the pop star’s death.

Murray said he had been giving Jackson 50 milligrams of propofol a night, and that he gave Jackson 25 milligrams of propofol on the night of his death, according to documents – far below the dosage required to anesthetize someone and keep him asleep, several experts said.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Dr. John Dombrowski, a member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. “I cannot believe that was the number that was given. Such a small amount won’t tip anyone over in terms of respiratory depression.”

More likely, he said, is that the numbers in the documents are in error.

Toxicology reports cited in court records said “lethal levels” of propofol were in Jackson’s blood. Murray said nothing he gave Jackson should have led to his death and that he truthfully answered detectives’ questions. (source)

Interesting. This doctor just can’t seem to get his name out of the (very) unwanted spotlight.

This may not be a popular line of thinking among Jackson fans, but a legal defense that pins the brunt of the blame on Jackson himself may be what it takes to release his doctors of liability.

Jackson, for all his Peter Pan ways, was a grown man. And by account after account, he was begging to be given things, to be prescribed drugs that aren’t good for grown elephants. According to his former nutrionist, he asked for Diprivan. According to some reports, he died from Diprivan.

The coldest devil’s advocate position says Jackson was a wrong-way driver on a one-way street—destined for disaster—and that not any one member of his entourage, not any one doctor on his tab, not any one drug, is to blame for his demise.

There, we said it. Said what a lawyer might one day say in court. (Mind you, no one—not Murray, not anyone—has been charged with wrongdoing in Jackson’s death.)

Do we feel better? No.

No one’s been charged yet, though we’re guessing it’s only a matter of time once the investigation’s finished and the autopsy results become unsealed. Maybe it’s time for the lawyers to start digging up MJ’s past and learn more about his vices?

Jackson, who was due to play at London’s O2 Arena, allegedly begged British medic, Dr Susan Etok, to get hold of a list of drugs, including powerful painkillers Diprivan (Propofol) and Demerol, in the U.K. because he “couldn’t trust” doctors in America.She tells Britain’s Sunday Mirror newspaper, “He kept saying, ‘Are you going to do it for me, you are going to do it for me, aren’t you?’ He was desperate, like a child begging his mum for sweets. Then he said, ‘I don’t care what it takes, I don’t care how much money it takes – if it costs half a million, that’s fine.’

“Then he said there were medications he took in the States that he needed. He said the names but they didn’t mean much to me. The one name I recognised was Diprivan. I knew it was something to do with anaesthetics and thought that seemed strange. But Michael kept saying, ‘They’re just routine’.”

Erok emailed Jackson to tell him that she couldn’t help him – he replied five days later saying he would find an alternative way of getting hold of the medication.
She adds, “He told me not to worry – he would get someone else to help out.”

(More here.)

Apparently, the King of Pop was undergoing considerable strain from his life under the spotlight as well as the grueling training for his planned 50-venue concert tour. According to the paper’s source, Jackson exhibited wild mood swings and candidly admitted an addiction to painkillers. The news we get about Jackson’s health in the months before his death just get grimmer and grimmer.

According to a psychiatrist’s report quoted by The Sun newspaper, the singer’s behaviour was increasingly erratic, with his mood swinging from an “almost manic” excitement about the tour to silence and staring into space.

A source close to the investigation into his death reportedly told the paper that Jackson was “clearly not mentally or physically equipped to cope” with the 50-night performance schedule at the O2 Arena.

“Michael was always adamant the show must go on – to the point where he was obsessed with the idea he would be ‘killed’ if he couldn’t go on stage,” The Sun quoted the source as saying.

“He had been backed into a corner and was falling apart under the strain.”

(Telegraph)

Why does dermatologist Dr. Arnold Klein think he has any authority over the kids’ future? The surprise request made on behalf of Klein has the gossip mags churning out more rumors that the dermatologist is the real biological father of Jackson’s elder two children. What a tangled web of connections! Klein has yet to confirm or deny these rumors.

More from E! Online:

Acting on behalf of Dr. Arnold Klein, attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan made a surprise appearance in court today to express his client’s concern for the “education, health care and welfare” of Jackson’s two eldest children, Prince Michael and Paris.

Not that Klein, who still has never flat-out denied that he is the biological father of those kids, thinks that their grandmother Katherine Jackson shouldn’t be taking care of them.

Klein is merely “acting on promises he made to Michael with respect to ensuring the long-term health and stability of the children and their ability to enjoy as normal of a life out of the spotlight as could be reasonably possible,” Kaplan and cocounsel Bradley P. Boyer said in a statement Monday night.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff, who earlier today awarded Katherine Jackson custody of her three grandchildren and agreed to visitation rights for Paris and Prince’s biological mother (and Klein’s former assistant), Debbie Rowe, said that Klein had no standing to challenge his decision at this time.

Michael Jackson hired the doctor in May, at a reported $150,000 a month, in order to monitor the pop star’s health during the grueling 50-stop concert series that was planned this summer. We guess he was hoping the big, fat paychecks would help him clear out his debts . But with Jackson gone, what’s Conrad gonna do now?

From MSNBC:

Dr. Conrad Murray needed a big payday when he became Michael Jackson’s personal physician last spring.The Las Vegas cardiologist owed at least $780,000 for settlements against his business, outstanding mortgage payments on his house, delinquent student loans, child support and credit cards. And that doesn’t include the $68,000 the distributor of an energy drink says Murray, a one-time business associate, owes for skipping out on payments.

Court records chronicling Murray’s woes in Las Vegas, where authorities searched his home this week as part of their manslaughter investigation into Jackson’s death, help explain why — beyond basking in a celebrity’s aura — Murray might have jumped at the $150,000-a-month Jackson’s promoter was prepared to pay him to keep the star healthy through a series of concerts in London.

DEA agents, Los Angeles police and Las Vegas police are executing a search warrant on the Las Vegas home of Michael Jackson’s personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray, a law enforcement source tells FOXNews.com. The officials descended on Murray’s gated community early Tuesday morning.

The raid is the latest development in a month-long manslaughter investigation that increasingly places Murray at the center of the mystery surrounding Jackson’s June 25 death.

On Monday, a law enforcement official told FOXNews.com that investigators believe Murray gave Jackson a fatal dose of the powerful sedative propofol hours before his death.

ABC News reports the following:

The King of Pop, for all intents and purposes, was dead — killed, ABC News has learned, by a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs that included OxyContin and Demerol.

But according to The Associate Press, investigators believe it was Dr. Conrad Murray who injected the pop icon around midnight with propofol, the powerful anesthetic authorities believe ultimately killed him.

“This doctor is in serious trouble,” criminal defense attorney Roy Black told “Good Morning America” today.

That’s not all. One chilling paragraph from that same article shows that this wasn’t Jackson’s first experience with the dangerous propofol:

An official close to the investigation told The Associated Press that Jackson relied on propofol like an alarm clock, instructing doctors to stop the IV when he wanted to wake up. It’s a drug authorities believe he may have been using for two years.

Michael Jackson’s personal physician was identified as a suspect in the Los Angeles Police Department’s manslaughter investigation into the pop star’s death, according to court records filed Thursday in Houston.

A pair of search warrants filed in Harris County District Court stated that investigators were looking for “items constituting evidence of the offense of manslaughter that tend to show that Dr. Conrad Murray committed the said criminal offense.”

The searches, which were carried out Wednesday at Murray’s medical clinic and storage unit in Houston, gave authorities access to billing records, medication orders, shipping receipts, billing receipts, medical records and “implements and instruments used in the commission of a crime.”

The court records were the first public confirmation by police that Murray was a focus of their probe. Detectives previously had interviewed Murray, but had declined to identify him as a suspect.

“I do not know what they are looking for, and I can’t possibly tell you how anything they took in any way connects with the death of Michael Jackson,” said Murray’s attorney, Edward Chernoff, who was present at both of the searches. Read on…

Murray still denies giving Michael Jackson anything that would result in the death of a patient. However, given all the physicians and drugs surrounding Michael Jackson, it sure seems like someone dropped the ball.

If the Jackson case officially turns into a manslaughter probe — no charges have been filed yet, and police and the coroner’s office are still conducting investigations — prosecutors would have to provide clear evidence that his doctor, or other health-care providers, acted in a reckless or negligent manner, thereby causing the 50-year-old pop icon’s death on June 25.

“Any time you do any lawful act, like the administration of drugs, if you do it in a way that’s reckless or indifferent to its consequences, you can be charged with manslaughter,” said Los Angeles attorney Harland Braun, who is not connected to the Jackson case, but is best known for successfully defending filmmaker John Landis in 1984 against manslaughter charges connected to three stunt-related deaths on the set of “The Twilight Zone” movie. “It’s just like if you’re driving recklessly down the street without regard to people’s safety. It has to be recklessness more than negligence … knowing the danger and acting despite that danger.”

Unlike a murder charge, manslaughter does not require proof of an intent to kill. In Jackson’s case, prosecutors would be looking at whether Murray or another health-care provider took an unnecessary risk by injecting the singer with drugs or providing him with dangerous medication. Read on…