Michael Jackson took drugs without permission, doctor claims

Michael Jackson's doctor is back on trial Wednesday on involuntary manslaughter charges over the popstar's death from a drug overdose.

Conrad Murray's trial opened yesterday in Los Angeles with a photo of Jackson's body draped in white on a hospital gurney and an audio recording of him slurring and apparently heavily drugged, two months before his death, AFP reports.

Murray's lawyers have painted a tragic picture of Jackson, saying he was desperate to launch a comeback tour but addicted to painkillers, which he needed to sleep and which killed him, ABC reports.

The 50-year-old died from an overdose of the powerful anesthetic propofol combined with sedatives.

However, a video of Jackson rehearsing "The Way You Make Me Feel" days before his death was also played to the court, which also heard he had plans for a world tour and a feature film version of his famous "Thriller" video, it reports.

AFP reports:

Murray's lawyer argued on Tuesday that Jackson died "instantly" of a massive overdose after taking two different drugs while the doctor was out of the room at the star's Holmby Hills mansion on June 25, 2009.

"He did an act without his doctor's knowledge, without his doctor's permission, against his orders. He did an act that caused his own death," Murray's lawyer Ed Chernoff argued.

Chernoff said Jackson took eight two-milligram lorazepam pills — enough to put six people to sleep — without his doctor's knowledge, and then gave himself an extra dose of the powerful sedative propofol.

The combination of drugs "killed him instantly… He died so rapidly, so instantly, he didn't even have time to close his eyes," he said.

If convicted, Conrad faces four years in jail.

Prosecutor David Walgren said the fatal drugs were administered by Murray.

"Propofol's for the induction and maintenance of general anesthesia for mechanically ventilated patients and for procedural sedation," Walgren said.

"It is not an agent for the treatment in insomnia and to use it to put someone to sleep in that manner is an extreme deviation from the standard of care and amounts to gross negligence."

But the defense said Murray was trying to wean Jackson off the propofol that he had been taking to deal with chronic sleeplessness caused by an addiction to the painkiller Demerol.

The doctor's lawyer Ed Chernoff said the singer died at his own hand, taking the lethal cocktail while the doctor was out of the room and against his advice, ABC reports.