Justice4MJ News

Prosecutor in Conrad Murray case is appointed a judge

2012-05-18T22:38:18Z

A Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who helped win the conviction of Michael Jackson's personal physician was appointed a judge Friday.

David Walgren, the lead prosecutor at last year's trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, was among eight attorneys named to the L.A. County Superior Court bench by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Walgren, a 43-year-old Democrat from Calabasas, worked on several high-profile cases during 16 years at the district attorney's office. He prosecuted a photographer accused of trying to blackmail actress Cameron Diaz and headed an unsuccessful 2009 attempt to extradite director Roman Polanski from Switzerland for sentencing in a three-decade-old child sex case.

His greatest attention came during Murray's manslaughter trial, a six-week televised proceeding covered by an international contingent of reporters.

In a closing argument that was widely praised, Walgren humanized Jackson by reminding jurors that the larger-than-life celebrity with a history of drug problems was a father whose three children adored and missed him.

Jackson fans applauded the prosecutor when he walked down the courthouse halls, and his performance sparked Facebook fan pages, including "David Walgren Is Hot."

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Calif. Medical Board Finally Moves to Revoke Conrad Murray's License After Michael Jackson Death

2012-03-09T18:09:58Z

The Medical Board of California has filed a petition to revoke Dr. Conrad Murray’s medical license, nearly three years after Michael Jackson died after taking anesthesia drugs prescribed and administered by Murray.

Jackson died on June 25, 2009. Since that time, Murray has been charged, tried, convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to four years in prison. At any point, the medical board could have filed an accusation against Jackson and started the process of revoking his license.

In June 2010 – one year after Jackson’s death – Antidote wrote that the board had dropped the ball by waiting so long to revoke Murray’s license and by failing to seek an interim suspension order:

In Murray’s case, the board could make a compelling claim that it exhausted its remedies in the criminal court before resorting to civil court. If a doctor using anesthesia simply to help a patient sleep isn’t dangerous, I’m not sure what is.

In January 2011, state prosecutors finally persuaded a Superior Court judge to take action where the medical board had failed. The judge suspended Murray’s license to practice medicine and ordered that the state notify all other states where Murray was licensed about the suspension. Yet the medical board still sat on the sidelines and did not file a petition to revoke Murray’s license.

Other states have been slow to act, too, even by state medical board standards. The Nevada Board of Medical Examiners showed the world a new standard for cluelessness when it filed charges against Murray in March 2010 – not for anything related to Jackson’s death but instead because Murray “twice failed to disclose to the Board that he was out of compliance with his court ordered child support obligation.” Being a deadbeat dadtrumped failing to call 911 when a patient died under his care. And yet, the Nevada board was saved from complete infamy by at least having the good sense to allow Murray’s license to expire in June 2011.

Hawaii did the same thing, essentially. The state’s Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs let Murray’s license expire in January 2010. Murray had been licensed there since 2001.

The Texas Medical Board waited until after Murray was sentenced in criminal court to suspend his license in February 2012. This is a step below the more serious action of forcing Murray to permanently surrender his license. By contrast, Dr. Rolando Arafiles had to permanently surrender his license in November 2011, the same month Murray was convicted of manslaughter in Jackson’s death. Arafiles did not kill any patients. His main infraction was lying to the board and intimidating witnesses against him.

And that brings us back to California. On February 22, the board finally filed a petition to revoke Murray’s license. There are only two causes for action: conviction of a crime and failure to maintain adequate records. The main details of Jackson’s death are included, but the accusation reads more like a formality than anything else. In a 10-page document, the board spends five pages just going over the applicable state code sections. The actual crimes perpetrated by Murray barely amount to four pages. They do include this nice summation, though:

Respondent’s acts and omissions in treating patient M.J. were so grossly negligent that they rose to the level of criminal homicide. Respondent administered a lethal combination and amount of drugs to patient M.J. He failed to continuously monitor the patient’s vital signs, appropriately maintain his airway, or ensure the presence of life saving equipment at the bedside. There was no continuous oxygen delivery system or cardiac monitoring in place. Respondent did not continuously monitor the pulse oximetry and blood pressure of patient M.J. No continuous intravenous access line was established for the patient. There was no crash cart, appropriate emergency resuscitation drugs, defibrillator, or medical personnel present in the patient’s room, other than Respondent.

Any one of those failures would be good reason to take action against a physician’s license. Nearly all of them were known within days of Jackson’s death. After many different journalistic investigations and legislative inquiries, the board has learned how to act more quickly in recent years. It’s simply astonishing that it has taken this long to take action in a case where the facts are so clear.

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California Medical Board filed the accusation/petition to REVOKE Murray's license

2012-03-09T17:58:21Z

February 22, 2012, the California Medical Board filed the accusation/petition to REVOKE Murray's license.

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Congrats David Walgren & Deborah Brazil - 2012 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year

2012-03-07T00:10:12Z

Congratulations David Walgren & Deborah Brazil
2012 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year

We honor 55 lawyers for their extraordinary achievements in 2011.

BY THE STAFF OF CALIFORNIA LAWYER | March 2012

2011 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year
March 2011

With this year's CLAY Awards, we recognize lawyers throughout the state whose legal work made a significant impact in 2011. They include state and county prosecutors, sole practitioners, and lawyers from large international firms. The awards identify 25 accomplishments in 19 areas of legal practice, ranging from criminal law and intellectual property to personal injury, and appellate work at the California Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. These victories reflect the breadth and depth of the work performed by California lawyers. Congratulations to all the winners.

Criminal Law

Deborah Brazil
Los Angeles county District Attorney's Office
David B. Walgren
Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office
In the pressure cooker of a trial under TV lights and with a mob of music fans outside the courthouse, Brazil and Walgren scored a major prosecution victory in one of the most closely watched criminal cases of the year. The jury's conviction of Dr. Conrad Murray of involuntary manslaughter in the drug death of the "King of Pop," Michael Jackson, came after 49 witnesses and 23 days of trial spread over six weeks. More than 2,200 reporters from around the world obtained credentials to cover the proceedings - more than for the O. J. Simpson and Scott Peterson murder trials, combined.

The scientific challenges of the trial required the prosecutors to become experts in anesthesiology and the proper use of the drug propofol, which was found at high levels in Jackson's system after his death. Propofol is commonly used during surgery, but Murray administered it as an at-home sedative for Jackson.
During the trial, Walgren questioned most of the prosecution's 33 witnesses. He also handled both the opening statement and closing argument.

Though both Brazil and Walgren have significant experience with homicide cases, a death from propofol toxicity was unknown to them and to the coroner's office. Lead trial lawyer Walgren focused on the science, presenting a clear picture to jurors that Murray had been infusing Jackson with propofol nightly for weeks to help him sleep, even though the doctor was not well trained in its use and failed to monitor Jackson once the drug was administered. Brazil presented witnesses at trial and helped to devise the county's legal strategy.

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Read digital magazine here

How the trial was documented by photographers and video inside the courtroom and in and out of the courthouse.

2012-03-06T17:23:25Z

CONRAD MURRAY TRIAL, WEEK 1: A REPORT FROM THE PRESS GALLERY
The first week of the latest Trial of the Century is in the books.

After four days of opening arguments, riveting testimony, and un-ending courthouse entrance-and-exit shots of Janet, Randy, Latoya, Katherine and assorted other Jacksons, what have we learned?

We learned that prosecutor David Walgren will try and prove gross negligence and therefore involuntary manslaughter by showing that Dr. Conrad Murray gave Jackson –- and concealed -- improper doses of a milky anesthetic called Propofol. We learned that Murray attorney Ed Chernoff claims Jackson self-administered an array of drugs, including the deadly dose. If convicted, Murray could get four years in prison.

But there may be a more immediate civics-lesson point for us to absorb while the lawyers slug it out. It is this: What legal rules brought the Murray trial into the public’s collective living room in the first place? Why was this case televised when so many others are not? And how many cameras are there actually in the courtroom feeding out what appears to be an endless stream of video to a dizzying array of news organizations?

First, a little history.

Since the advent of television in 1948, the courts –- particularly the federal courts -– have resisted televising trials on the theory that television violated the defendant’s rights. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing in the landmark Estes v. Texas case in 1965, said: “I believe it violates the Sixth Amendment for the federal courts and the Fourteenth Amendment for the state courts to allow criminal trials to be televised to the public at large.”

It should be noted that this view by Warren was not the law of the land handed down in Estes.

In the main opinion, Justice Thomas Clark drew a clear distinction between print reporters, who he believed had the right to enter the courtroom pen and pad in hand under the First Amendment, and television journalists whose cameras were barred from it under the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.

Justice Clark went on to say quite a few things that have great applicability to the Murray trial. He argued that television cameras are disruptive, while the mere presence of note-taking print reporters is not. He added: “. . . The News reporter is not permitted to bring his typewriter or printing press. When advances in these arts permit reporting by printing press or by television without their present hazards to a fair trial we will have another case.”

In fact what makes the Murray-Michael Jackson case so interesting from a “free-press/fair trial” perspective is that “these arts” were all on display. But scarcely anybody noticed.

A single quiet camera took still images that were shared by print media under a court-sanctioned sharing or “pool” arrangement. Three unobtrusive black boxes took the video and fed it to private media companies who piped it into your office or living room or computer, again, with the blessing of Murray Judge Michael E. Pastor. And the reporters -- who sat in the small courtroom on church-like pews lined with a long light-blue strip of padding -- used small laptops or smart devices to take notes.

Al Seib of The Los Angeles Times was assigned the pool duties of snapping the shots during week one of the trial. Although I sat about 18 inches from the 25-year veteran of the Times for three days, I never heard his camera make a sound.

Seib used something called a “hard blimp,” which completely encased his Cannon Mark IV. When he pointed the 10-inch blimp tube at the action, Janet Jackson, sitting perhaps six inches from his left elbow and curled up in a felt black shawl, did not notice his movements at all.

The whole thing was mounted on an expandable pole that looked like a black pogo stick and his 70-200 mm lens encased within the blimp silently zoomed and turned as Jackson security guard Faheem Muhammad shared a terse exchange with defense lawyer Chernoff on Day 2 of the trial.

Seib says the pooling system ensures that picture-taking is not disruptive.

“I think it’s a wonderful scenario to have, because it removes the ‘spectacle of the camera,’” Seib said during an impromptu interview during the daily 10 a.m. break from testimony on Thursday. “If you have too many cameras it becomes a distraction to all the parties involved. That’s why so many judges are so reluctant to have them.”

In fact, if you go to the website of the national Radio Television Digital News Association, you will find a list of every state and its cameras in the courtroom status. See rtnda.org/pages/media_items/cameras-in-the-court-a-state-by-state-guide55.php . After decades of sometimes rancorous disagreement, all states allow televised proceedings of some trial or appellate proceedings under some circumstances, although the federal courts mostly do not. (Although the federal courts are again experimenting with cameras in trials.)

Photographers like Seib, who is from Illinois and has experienced being excluded from the courtroom, scrupulously follows Judge Pastor’s rule barring photos of anything on the public side of the “bar.” That means, in addition to no pictures of jurors, no courtroom pictures of the Jackson family, the public fans, the deputies keeping watch near the public seats of the ninth floor courthouse in the Clara Shortridge Foltz criminal courts building at 210 W. Temple Street in Los Angeles, the same place O.J. Simpson and rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg were tried.

Pastor’s ninth-floor courtroom has four rows on the other side of the lawyers-and-judges “bar,” and seats up to 65 or so people if you squeeze them in tightly. About 25 or 30 members of the press attended the first week. There were also about a dozen or so members of the public, from six to 10 members of the Jackson family, and a handful of deputies and court personnel.

The three video cameras in the Murray trial are all encased in innocuous black boxes. The boxes are wall-mounted, about two-and-a-half feet long, and two feet high. Two of them set sit above the jurors: one over the head of the first juror in the back row and one above the fifth. The third box sits at the very back of the courthouse, pointed at the judge, above the heads of the fourth and final row of benches that house press, public spectators and family members.

Hans Laetz, a longtime television journalist and recent law school graduate, manages the television and radio media who receive the feeds from the black boxes and work each day in what had once been “Camp O.J. (Simpson)” on the 12th Floor of the court building. Among a dizzying array of wires, monitors, phones, microphones, tripods and cameras, up to four dozen journalists mill around as the case ebbs and flows. Periodically, they get up and walk to the spot outside the encampment to do “stand ups” for their stations. The 12th floor is the only place in the courthouse where photography and interviews are normally allowed.

Laetz, a contractor with the Los Angeles-based Radio & Television News Association of Southern California, says coverage of this mega-trial has gone smoothly in large part due to cooperation between the courts, the press and the police.

For example, Laetz asked the TV folks to voluntarily not use tripods on the sidewalk, so that jurors, judges and other court personnel could pass what looks like a madhouse from 7 a.m. until 8:30 a.m. every morning. “We know we have a constitutional right to set up a tripod, but in this case the police are right,” he said. “Somebody could trip and get hurt. So everybody gets a hand-held and you still get the shot.”

And the television reporters are getting their shots.

“I believe in transparency,” said CNN Anchor Don Lemon. “I think that’s what America is all about. Americans should be in on the process,” Lemon said. “Visual media is part of the media. It helps when people see how the process works. Without transparency, there is room to conceal things,” he said.

Ethan Smith, a senior special writer with the Wall Street Journal’s Los Angeles bureau, was in court every day during week one. “We have to be the eyes and ears of the people to keep the process accountable,” Smith said. The television coverage, ironically, keeps the press more accountable. “It turns the mirror back on us and keeps us accountable even as we are keeping the courts accountable,” Smith said.

Each day, I lined up with Smith, Lemon, Seib and dozens of others to wait for deputies to waive us into the courtroom. You were on time, through two security checks, wearing your press badge, or you didn’t get in the courtroom. Court public information officer Mary Hearn, working with her staff and court deputies, ensured that no pictures were taken on the ninth floor, cleared the hallway of press as trial participants walked in each day, and generally kept order.

That’s why if Murray is convicted, his chances of arguing that the press ruined his case appear to be nil, as was the case when disgraced Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling made that failed argument in a case that reached the Supreme Court in 2010.

Has the argument ever worked? Well, yes.

The seminal example of a defendant successfully arguing that the press violated his Sixth Amendment rights came in the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case Sheppard v. Maxwell. In Sheppard the U.S. Supreme Court said that the trial judge and the press allowed a “Roman circus” atmosphere to prevail.

Dr. Sam Shepherd, convicted of killing his pregnant wife, was granted a new trial as a result and eventually walked away a free man. The Shepherd case is widely believed to be the inspiration for the Harrison Ford film “The Fugitive.”

But getting back to “these arts” and their evolution, it is remarkable that so many broadcasters—all local Los Angeles television stations, plus AP Broadcast, Reuters, Univision, MetroNetworks, CBS Radio, Fox Radio News, UniSat, CNN/HLN and a host of others—are all able to transmit the trial without creating the same circus atmosphere that soiled Shepherd v. Maxwell. They do it with three quiet video cameras and a single coordinator. They do it with cooperation between the courts and the media.

-v-

Ben Holden, a licensed attorney and former newspaper executive editor, is director of the Reynolds National Center for Courts and Media. RNCCM, a unit of the University of Nevada-Reno, is an affiliate of the National Judicial College.

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Conrad Murray to stay in jail during Michael Jackson death appeal

2012-02-25T00:36:00Z

A judge ruled Friday that the doctor convicted in Michael Jackson’s death must remain behind bars while lawyers appeal his case.

Dr. Conrad Murray had asked to be released from jail, where he is serving two years for manslaughter, but Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor denied the bail motion, saying the physician was a flight risk.

“The bottom line is the defense does not have significant property or employment or family ties in the Los Angeles or California area,” Pastor said of Murray, a native of the Caribbean who practiced medicine in Nevada and Texas.

The judge said that even with his medical licenses revoked, Murray remained a danger to society.

“If he were to go to another country, that country might very well allow him to practice medicine,” Pastor said.

Pastor cited comments Murray made in a documentary last year which, the judge said, suggested Murray stood by his decision to use a surgical anesthetic to treat Jackson’s insomnia.

“Perhaps Dr. Murray is the only person on the planet that believes this,” Pastor said. Murray, who was convicted in November, was not in court for the brief hearing.

One of his attorneys, J. Michael Flanagan, said the doctor was being held in solitary confinement “23 hours of the day and sometimes 24” and had lost “30 to 40 pounds.”

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Dr. Conrad Murray Wants Release From Jail While His Appeal Is Pending

2012-01-28T06:43:00Z

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — In court papers filed Friday, Michael Jackson’s personal physician asked to be released from jail while he appeals his involuntary manslaughter conviction.

In a written declaration, Dr. Conrad Murray asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor to release him on his own recognizance or on bail pending his appeal.

Murray noted in the declaration that he has been informed by his appellate attorney “that my appeal will take well over a year before an opinion is rendered.”

“I am aware of the fact that I will have to serve out the remainder of my sentence less credit for the time I have served if I am not successful on appeal,” wrote Murray, who was sentenced Nov. 29 to four years in county jail.

Murray, who will turn 59 next month, has been behind bars since being convicted Nov. 7.

The defense is asking that the request be heard Feb. 24.

In his declaration, Murray wrote that he would comply with any conditions such as electronic monitoring and would live with Nicole Alvarez and the couple’s son, who will turn 3 in March. He also said he would “endeavor to seek employment within the parameters allowed by the court so that I could contribute to the support of each of my children.”

In court papers filed along with the declaration, defense attorney J. Michael Flanagan wrote that Murray’s sentence “is very severe when considering his life history and the isolated and unusual circumstances giving rise to the facts upon which his conviction was based.”

In the filing, Flanagan wrote that Murray’s conviction “arose out of facts that were the result of an unusual situation, a close friendship with Michael Jackson and a desire to assist him through a difficult situation. Dr. Murray may have made wrong choices and not have exercised good medical judgment at times, but he never intended to injure anyone.”

The defense attorney also noted that Murray is jailed under “maximum security” conditions. He is isolated in a solitary cell and only taken out with his hands chained to his waist when he is escorted by several sheriff’s deputies, and that he is “always chained to a table when he meets with his lawyer in the attorney conference room.”

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Michael Jackson's Family Drops Restitution Claim Against Conrad Murray

2012-01-20T06:39:00Z

Conrad Murray -- the former personal physician of Michael Jackson who's currently serving out a four-year jail sentence for causing the singer's death -- can at least scratch one worry off his list.

Prosecutors for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office has withdrawn its request for restitution from Murray, following the family's decision not to pursue it, a spokesperson for the DA's office confirms to TheWrap.

No reason was given for the decision -- and TheWrap's request for comment from the family's lawyer has not yet been answered.

But there's a good chance that the singer's kin realized that there was no way they would collect. During Murray's late November sentencing, prosecutors asked for restitution in excess of $100 million, an amount reflecting what Jackson would have made during his upcoming string of dates at London's O2 Arena, which the singer was rehearsing for at the time of his death.

During the sentencing, even the prosecutors conceded that it would be impossible for Murray to repay that amount.

Murray, who's appealing his involuntary manslaughter conviction, had his medical license suspended by the Medical Board of California earlier this month -- standard operating procedure for doctors who've been convicted of felonies.

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Michael Jackson - Michael Jackson Fans Suing Conrad Murray For 'Emotional Damage'

2012-01-09T06:24:00Z

A group of Michael Jackson fans are suing the singer's former physician DR. Conrad Murray for "emotional damage" over the star's 2009 death.

Last November (11), Murray was found guilty of administering the fatal dose of anaesthetic propofol which cost the Thriller hitmaker his life.

He was sentenced to four years behind bars for the crime but his legal woes are far from over - members of the Michael Jackson Community, which is based in France, have launched a lawsuit against the imprisoned medic for causing them pain and distress.

Lawyer Emmanuel Ludot filed the documents on behalf of about 100 fans on Friday (06Jan12).

He tells the Afp, "It's similar to losing a childhood friend in a traffic accident. Because this death affects you, you have the possibility to file a suit and seek compensation."

The case is set to be heard in Orleans, France on 11 April (12).

Conrad Murray Medical License Suspension Court Filing .pdf

2012-01-05T06:44:00Z

Conrad Murray Medical Board License Suspension Court Filing .pdf

Found at the Medical Board of California Public Document Search