Medical Expert Says Michael Jackson Was Incapable of Giving Himself Propofol
Prosecutors in the Conrad Murray involuntary manslaughter trial said today that the residue of drugs discovered during Jackson's autopsy suggests that Murray gave the singer much larger doses of sedatives than what he reported to police. A medical expert also testified today that Jackson was so heavily drugged in the hours preceding his death that he would have been incapable of self-administering the dose of propofol that killed him. The testimony strongly opposed the defense's theory.
“He can’t give himself an injection if he’s asleep,” Dr. Steven Shafer, a leading expert on anesthesiology who teaches at Columbia University Medical School, told jurors today, reports CBS L.A. Murray's defense posed the scenario that Jackson injected himself with the anesthetic, a scenario which Shafer deemed as "crazy." Shafer said that the more likely scenario was that Murray placed Jackson on an IV propofol drip in the morning of his death and left to make phone calls as the singer slept. Before Murray returned, Jackson probably stopped breathing. “This fits all of the data in this case, and I am not aware of a single piece of data that is inconsistent with this explanation,” Shafer said.
In a "virtual chemistry class," as described in the report, Shafer pointed the jury to diagrams and formulas, indicating that the autopsy results allege that Murray reported much lower doses of the drugs given to Jackson to police. Shafer noted that Jackson would have been "extremely groggy," per the report, from drugs administered via IV during the night.
Murray told police that he left Jackson's side for two minutes, during which the defense said the singer could have grabbed a syringe and injected himself with the fatal dose of propofol. “People don’t just wake up from anesthesia hell bent to pick up a syringe and pump it into the IV,” Shafer said, reminding the jury that the procedure was complicated. “It’s a crazy scenario.”
Shafer also noted that the singer's veins were so deteriorated that it would have been extremely painful to self-inject. Witnesses have testified that Jackson knew the drug had to be diluted with lidocaine in an IV to prevent burning upon entering the veins.
