Lawyers rested their cases yesterday at the trial of Michael Jackson’s doctor, paving the way for closing arguments after medic Conrad Murray bluntly declined to testify in his own defence.
Judge Michael Pastor adjourned the trial until tomorrow, when prosecution and defence attorneys will summarise their cases after nearly six weeks of testimony which has heavily implicated Dr Murray over Michael Jackson’s 2009 death.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve seen and heard all of the evidence in this case,” Judge Pastor told the seven-man, five-woman jury at the Los Angeles Superior Court, where the trial started on September 27.
The announcement came shortly after Mr Murray, charged with involuntary manslaughter over Michael Jackson’s death from an overdose of powerful sedatives, announced his much-anticipated decision on whether to take the stand himself.
“My decision is that I will not testify in this matter,” said Dr Murray, who only a day earlier had surprised observers by saying he had not yet decided, fuelling intense speculation that he could do so.
Most observers have assumed that Dr Murray, whose account of Michael Jackson’s death was given in a two-hour interview with police, would not testify as it could only harm his case.
That point of view was bolstered on Monday when prosecutor David Walgren staged a forensic cross-examination picking apart the testimony of the defence’s star witness, doctor Paul White, which he could have repeated on Dr Murray.
But others argued that, given how many holes prosecutors have picked in his defence case, Dr Murray – who has sat in grim silence for the last five weeks – could have decided to appeal directly to the jury.
Dr Murray faces up to four years in jail if convicted over the singer’s death from “acute propofol intoxication” in Los Angeles, where the he was rehearsing for a series of planned comeback shows.
The prosecution claims that Dr Murray, who was being paid $150,000 (€105,000) a month, killed Michael Jackson by administering a deadly cocktail of drugs to help him sleep, and then abandoning him at the crucial moment.
The defence has sought to present Michael Jackson as a desperate drug addict, who would have ended up killing himself with an accidental overdose with or without Dr Murray’s help.
Dr Murray’s decision not to testify was announced shortly after Dr White stood down after being hammered by prosecutor Walgren for a second day, following his grilling Monday.
The defence then announced they were resting their case, while the prosecution called its own star witness, Steven Shafer, back to the stand briefly to rebut Dr White’s expert testimony.
On Monday, Dr White conceded that Dr Murray should have called 911 more quickly when he found the star not breathing, but maintained his theory that Michael Jackson injected a fatal dose of propofol while the medic was out of the room.
In a bizarre scene yesterday after the end of his testimony, Dr White was surrounded by Jackson supporters chanting and holding placards, apparently waiting for a car to take him away outside the front of the court.
He declined to speak to reporters, saying he would do so once the trial is over.
The TMZ celebrity news website had reported that Dr Murray’s defence lawyers, Ed Chernoff and Michael Flanagan, were split over whether he should take the stand.