Police detectives searched the offices of one of Michael Jackson’s doctors for evidence of manslaughter on Wednesday, according to various US media reports.
Dr Conrad Murray, who is 51, and was at Jackson’s Los Angeles home when the pop star died on 25 June, has offices in Houston, Texas.
In a written statement issued by Murray’s laywer Ed Chernoff on Wednesday and reported by CNN, Houston police officers, accompanied by detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department, and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents presented a search warrant that “authorized law enforcement to search for and seize items, including documents, they believed constituted evidence of the offense of manslaughter”.
Chernoff said the search finished at about 12.30 pm and the officers took a copy of a computer hard drive and 21 documents.
Tammy Kidd, a spokeswoman at Chernoff’s office told CNN that the raid took them by surprise. They had not expected it because “we’ve had open lines of communication this whole time,” she said.
Gus Villanueva, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, told the press that the search warrant “services part of the ongoing investigation into the death of Michael Jackson”.
According to his lawyer, Murray has been interviewed twice by the police and they are not aware of any plans to interview him again.
Chernoff said that based on Murray’s itemized minute by minute description of Jackson’s last days, he should not be a target of criminal charges. He said his client appeared to be attracting all the “fury” over the singer’s death because he was the “last doctor standing” when Jackson died.
Murray now has a bodyguard with him day and night, and is very “frustrated by negative and often erroneous media reports”, said Chernoff.
In the meantime, in another investigation into Jackson’s death, the Los Angeles County Coroner is awaiting the results of toxicology tests to determine the cause of death. A spokesman for the coroner said results of the autopsy are likely to be released in a week or so.
A report in the Los Angeles Times said the coroner’s office has requested another interview with Murray and wants more information from him.
None of the information taken during the search at his premises on Wednesday had been requested before, neither by the police nor the LA coroner’s office, said Murray’s lawyer.
William Bratton, Chief of Los Angeles Police told CNN they would wait for the coroner to determine cause of death and then consider if they were dealing with a homicide or an accidental overdose.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, Murray found Jackson unconscious in the bedroom of his rented Holmby Hills home and performed CPR on him until the paramedics arrived.
The paper said police questioned him in the presence of his laywer at UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson later died. Murray said through his lawyer that he did not give Jackson any narcotics or other medications that “should have” caused his death and was puzzled as to what may have caused it.
Sources: CNN, Los Angeles Times.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD