Michael Jackson fans around the world will be watching attentively today as the singer’s doctor Conrad Murray finally goes on trial over the self-declared King of Pop’s shock death two years ago, aged 50.
On the eve of the twice-delayed trial in Los Angeles, seven men and five women were selected to decide Dr Murray’s fate on involuntary manslaughter charges over the star’s death on June 25, 2009.
Dr Murray, 58, faces up to four years in jail if convicted, in a trial expected to last five weeks.
The jurors aged 32 to 57 include six whites, five Latinos and one African-American. Half indicated they had ever been a fan of Michael Jackson or his family.
Dr Murray is accused of giving Jackson an overdose of the powerful sedative Propofol to help alleviate the star’s insomnia during a stay at a rented estate in the posh Holmby Hills neighbourhood of Los Angeles while rehearsing for a series of London comeback shows. The doctor has never denied administering the drug – typically used as an anesthetic during surgery – to Michael Jackson, but denies having “abandoned his patient” at the fatal moment.
His lawyer Ed Chernoff is expected to argue that the world-famous Thriller singer, addicted to sedatives and desperate for sleep, administered more of the drug himself while Dr Murray was out of the room.
The trial will be televised live, but judge Michael Pastor promised the jury that “at no time will jurors be photographed or filmed or otherwise recorded.
“We take your privacy seriously,” said Judge Pastor, who has however rejected a defence request for the jury to be sequestered or otherwise isolated during the whole trial, as took place during the O.J. Simpson trial.
Security will be ratchet-tight at the LA Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles, where a major media circus is expected to be joined by often colourful Jackson supporters lamenting the star’s demise and demanding justice. Some fans complain that Caribbean-born Murray, who was being paid $150,000 a month by Michael Jackson at the time of his death, faces only four years in jail. He has been free on $75,000 bail since being charged in February 2010.
The jurors include high school graduates, some with a college education and one with an MBA. Six substitute jurors were chosen in case any of the first 12 selected drop out.
The trial was originally due in March, but was delayed twice. During that period, the judge has rejected a string of requests, notably to let Michael Jackson’s former doctors testify, in what the defence hoped would prove he was a drug addict.
Michael Jackson’s family is expected in court – his mother and father, Katherine and Joe Jackson, as several of his siblings who attended six days of pre-trial hearings in January.
But simmering tensions between them were stirred in July, when Katherine Jackson announced a tribute concert for her son, scheduled in Britain on October 8, a couple of weeks into the trial.