What does Valerie Wass’s appeal tell us of Conrad Murray’s case?

Updated and corrected on April 14, 2013

Valerie Wass filed an appeal for her client Conrad Murray claiming that he is not to blame for the death of Michael Jackson. She says that the night Michael died he was not on a drip and that Murray delivered Michael only 25ml of propofol (by a syringe) after which Michael allegedly self-injected himself with another portion of 25ml (by another syringe) and this allegedly caused his death.

Though Wass is trying to present her story as something new it is the exact replica of what the defense and Dr. White already proclaimed during the trial and each of their statements were refuted by the prosecution and Dr. Shafer in a thorough, meticulous and super scientific way.

This is why I would like to make a short summary of the main arguments that unequivocally prove Murray’s guilt. Since this is a purely scientific matter my main problem here was to express complex things in the simplest language possible, so please don’t be cross with me for wording things primitively. My goal is that everyone, even Valerie Wass, understands that Murray is simply fooling us.

WASS’S DISPUTE WITH THOMAS MESEREAU

Valerie Wass voiced her version of the events during an interview with Piers Morgan in the course of a vehement discussion with Thomas Mesereau. She was so adamant about her story that she hardly gave Thomas Mesereau a chance to put in a word. The conversation started with Murray singing a song on the telephone which produced an inimitable impression on everyone present and made me doubt Murray’s adequacy:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONRAD MURRAY, MICHAEL JACKSON’S FORMER PHYSICIAN: (Singing) He’s a little boy that Santa Claus forgot and goodness knows he did not want a lot, he wrote a note to Santa for some crayons and a toy, it broke his little heart when he found Santa hadn’t come.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORGAN: A surreal moment from Anderson Cooper’s interview with Dr. Conrad Murray when the convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s death burst into song on live television last night. Meanwhile, jury selection continues in Katherine Jackson’s lawsuit against AEG, seeking $40 billion.

Now Conrad Murray’s attorney, Valerie Wass, is here to go head-to-head with Michael Jackson’s attorney, Tom Mesereau.

Welcome to you, Valerie Wass. You weren’t happy watching Tom and I discussing this last night. Why not?

VALERIE WASS, ATTORNEY FOR DR. CONRAD MURRAY: Well, I felt that he was — he was viewed in a — in a wrong manner. I feel very strongly about Dr. Murray, and that he’s a compassionate man and I believe that he is an innocent man. I believe he was wrongly convicted. And I don’t know if Tom really knows the facts of the case and has read the record and all of the evidence, such as I have done for the last year.

THOMAS A. MESEREAU JR., DEFENDED MICHAEL JACKSON IN MOLESTATION TRIAL: I haven’t read — I haven’t read the record, but I watched a lot of the trial. And every single physician in this courtroom, including the — including Murray’s own expert, thought that having propofol in the home and administering it the way he did was a gross deviation from the medical standard of care.

Nobody justified having propofol in their house. Nobody justified administering it the way he apparently did. He didn’t have the equipment, he didn’t have personnel assisting him. He didn’t have backup equipment. He didn’t have the medications you need if something goes wrong. He didn’t have the power supply if something goes wrong. Everything he did, in my opinion, was a disgrace, and I think he caused the death of Michael Jackson.

MORGAN: Valerie?

WASS: Well, even if he deviated from the standard of care, he didn’t cause the death of Michael Jackson because on the night Michael Jackson died, he was not on a propofol drip. And that’s what nobody understands. And using propofol in a home is not — is not illegal. It’s not — it’s not illegal. It’s an off-label use. And off-label use —

MESEREAU: Did you read the toxicology?

WASS: Absolutely.

MESEREAU: The toxicology — the toxicology examined eight specimens from his body. The stomach, the liver, the heart, the veins, the femoral artery. He had propofol in every single of the eight specimens, OK?

WASS: That’s correct. And the toxicology results are —

MESEREAU: I mean, he was loaded with propofol.

WASS: He was loaded from propofol from a 25 milligram bolus injection that Michael Jackson self-administered shortly before he died. It matches up with all the toxicology findings.

MESEREAU: First of all the — the amount of propofol grossly exceeded the 25 that Mr. — Dr. Murray said he administered. First of all. Second of all —

WASS: That’s right. Because Jackson administered another 25 milligram dose.

MESEREAU: Well —

WASS: And when he administered rapidly, that’s what caused cardiac arrest and it comports with the toxicology results.

MESEREAU: Well, the jury came back in eight hours, finding that Michael Jackson did not self-administer propofol, that your client was grossly negligent and caused his death. And now listen, I don’t think he intentionally did this. He wasn’t charged with premeditated murder, he was charged with gross negligence, involuntary manslaughter, and every single expert that testified admitted he had committed gross negligence in a variety of ways.

One expert said there was 17 acts of gross negligence. Propofol in the home, administering it the way he did —

WASS: That’s right. But he was not on a propofol drip on that night, how can he be — there was no cause.

(CROSSTALK)

MESEREAU: Your client told the police —

WASS: No, the two months that Dr. Murray administered propofol to Michael Jackson on a drip, Michael Jackson was fine. It was after he stopped administering the propofol drips that he died.

MESEREAU: Well, that’s your argument. I understand that. And I think you’re doing a commendable job defending him. The problem is, the jury rejected it in eight hours and every single medical expert rejected it as well.

WASS: I actually spoke to one of the jurors last summer and found it really interesting that they adopted this slit saline bag theory. It was a ludicrous theory that was — that probably came about because the prosecutor popped the tab on the Exhibit 30 bottle and they were forced to find another way to hang the bag. It was an absurd method. No — even the prosecution’s expert had never heard of such an absurd method of hanging a drip.

MESEREAU: Well, your client ordered propofol, took it into his home. I think he had it delivered to his girlfriend’s apartment, took gallons into his home and that alone was a gross deviation from acceptable medical standards.

WASS: That’s right. But it’s not — it’s not a causative factor. That’s the difference.

MESEREAU: It’s not a causative factor? Then what caused his death? Every single specimen was loaded with propofol. It was a propofol induced death. That was the cause of death and nobody really disputed that. The argument was, where did the propofol come from, and Murray should not have brought it in the home. It doesn’t belong in the home. It’s not a treatment for insomnia.

(CROSSTALK)

WASS: Michael Jackson had his own stash of propofol when Dr. Murray first started treating Michael Jackson. There’s evidence that he was on propofol —

MORGAN: OK. Let me — let me jump in and speak — it’s been fascinating to watch you both go at it. He’s obviously already been tried and is in jail as a result. Let’s move to what this new trial is basically going to come down to, which involves a responsibility aspect of who was really employing Conrad Murray.

http://www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1304/03/pmt.01.html

Here is the video of the conversation:

So Valerie Wass claims that Michael was supposedly not on a drip that night. Moreover according to her Michael was on a drip for two months before that (so Murray does admit it now) and all this time he was alive, and when Murray stopped administering propofol this way and made only one 25 milligram injection Michael suddenly died. Wass agrees that Michael was loaded with propofol but she is sure that all of it came from a 25mg bolus injection and that the fatal injection was made by Michael himself and he died of a cardiac arrest as a result of it.

To check up this crazy but washed out version we need to recall what was determined at the trial about the possibility of Michael dying of a single 25mg bolus injection. This matter was thoroughly discussed by Dr. Shafer.

 25 MG OF PROPOFOL

Dr. Shafer said that though 25mg is an extremely small quantity under certain circumstances it can arrest a patient’s breathing (25mg are equal to 2.5ml)

He made a computer simulation for this case and showed that at the moment when propofol is pushed into the vein the concentration of propofol in the blood is very high, however then it drops almost immediately (see the dot line on the picture below).

On the brain propofol does not work that fast – over there propofol gradually grows and reaches its peak only  two minutes later (see the non-dot line on the same picture).

The level of propofol in the brain is crucial as propofol acts via the brain and its only danger is a possibility that it might affect the brain so hard that it stops sending signals to the lungs to breathe. Therefore the most common and in fact only complication when administering propofol is a respiratory failure and anesthesiologists are always on the lookout and ready for this complication.

However a bolus injection of 25mg is so minimal a quantity that it cannot affect the brain and therefore cannot start a breathing arrest. The picture shows that the “brain line” of propofol does not even remotely reach the “apnea threshold” which is a point when breathing stops.

To exclude any possibility of a mistake in this simulation Dr. Shafer extended the corridor of sensibility to the drug adding individual people’s reactions to it and after that it turned out that a small number of people did fall into a risk group.  See the “brain line” rising towards the gray area and at one point reaching it – this is exactly the 1,5 minute period within which a small number of patients are at the risk of stopping breathing:

If patient-to-patient deviations are added to this model a small number of patients will be at risk even with this small dose

But then Dr. Shafer proved that though in theory this scenario was possible for Michael’s particular case it was not applicable.

The gist of it is that even if a patient stops breathing as a result of these 25mg his heart will go on working for another 10 minutes – there is still some air in the lungs and it keeps the heart beating. During those 10 minutes all propofol in the blood will be broken up or metabolized. The computer simulation shows that by the time the heart dies both lines (propofol in the blood and propofol in the brain) come close to a zero point. You can see it in bottom right hand corner of the picture.

However the autopsy report showed the level of propofol in Michael’s blood as 2,6 micrograms. And this figure is customary for cases when patients receive not 25mg of propofol but a full-time general anesthesia involving 200ml (2000mg) of this drug or more.

The propofol concentration of 2,6 mcg taken from the autopsy report was the most conservative figure used by Dr. Shafer as all the rest were much higher – for example, the overall propofol level measured at the hospital was 4,1 mcg and the level found in the heart was 3,2 mcg.

The 2,6 mcg level of propofol recorded in Michael’s blood is shown in the picture as the Femoral Vein line. And if we compare the nearly zero point where the 25ml injection takes us to after the 10 minutes of heart beating with the real level of propofol found in Michael’s body we realize that he should have got a bigger, a much bigger dose of propofol.

This 2,6 mcg level required an explanation and Dr. Shafer provided it:

• “Michael Jackson received more than 25 mg”.

50 MG OF PROPOFOL

However Wass was talking of two 25mg injections – the initial was given by Murray and the next 25mg injection was allegedly self-administered by MJ thus bringing the total quantity to 50mg (5ml).

Let us put the matter of “self-injection” aside for a moment and see whether the level of propofol found in Michael’s body (femoral vein) is consistent with Wass’s 50mg theory. Dr. Shafer naturally looked into this version too and even turned it into a much harsher scenario – in his simulation all 50mg was given as one injection and pushed as a bolus (at once)  instead of two possibly slow 25mg injections with a time span between them.

The snapshot made during the trial demonstrates total impossibility of this scenario for Michael’s case.

Now you know what to look for in the picture and see that at the moment when the heart stops ten minutes after the injection the level of propofol is approximately 5 times as low as the level registered in the autopsy report and this means that the propofol given must have been much higher than the 50ml mentioned by Wass.

The reason why the level of propofol drops so fast after it is injected is always the same – when breathing stops the heart goes on beating for at least 10 minutes, the blood continues to circulate and the metabolism process quickly takes away propofol from the system.

This is why doctors and patients like propofol so much – no matter what amount of it has been given it metabolizes so quickly in the body that the moment it stops dripping the patient opens his eyes – it breaks up into its metabolites almost instantly with no trace of propofol found in the blood. The most it takes to fully drive all propofol from the system is 5 minutes or less.

The only place where a little bit of propofol remains even after all of it is gone is the urine. The reason why it happens is because a tiny fraction of non-metabolized propofol manages to escape into the bladder and stays there until the urine is evacuated. If the patient dies the bladder will still act like a bag which keeps the propofol that accumulated there when the patient was still alive and producing urine. Upon his death no more propofol will be added, but the one that got there will be stored.

For propofol to be found in the blood, like in Michael’s case, first of all its quantity should be so big that when breathing stops and the level of propofol begins to quickly decrease, by the time the heart dies (ten minutes later) some propofol should still remain in the body and show a level higher than zero – like the 2,6 mcg in Michael’s blood, for example.

Another reason why propofol may register in the blood is when it flows into the body after the patient dies. In this case it simply streams into the veins and accumulates there without breaking up as nothing in the body is working any longer and no metabolism is taking place.

What course of events could produce the result of so much propofol in the blood?

Dr. Shafer came to a conclusion that it should be a dripping process during which the quantity of propofol was slowly building up and at some point reached a level when breathing stopped. Ten minutes later Michael’s heart stopped too but since propofol was still dripping its concentration in the blood continued rising and reached the level found at the autopsy. The reason why all this happened is because Conrad Murray was simply not looking and is therefore guilty of an unheard of,  terrible, egregious, unconscionable negligence.

The other scenario can be worked out on the basis of Valerie Wass’s words. She says that it was not a dripping process and all propofol was delivered by a syringe. But in this case Murray must have first made an injection of propofol big enough to stop Michael breathing and then continued making these injections again and again until ten minutes later the heart stopped and inject propofol even after that in order to further accumulate it in the blood.

But the described process is actually a premeditated murder. So if Valerie Wass wants to prove that Murray is actually a murderer and not a grossly negligent doctor she is very much welcome to prove it. This is in fact what she is trying to do now.

However you have probably noticed that Valerie Wass used the argument that Michael did not die of a respiratory failure but of a cardiac arrest. Dr. White heavily relied on this version too during the trial but it was also thoroughly disproved by Dr. Shafer.

But how is the situation different in case it was a heart arrest and not a breathing failure?

NO CARDIAC ARREST

You have seen that all above scenarios were based on the assumption that breathing stopped first and ten minutes later a heart arrest followed.

This assumption has an explanation. Propofol does not affect the heart at all and acts on the brain only. And if brain activity stops it no longer sends a signal to the lungs to breathe and this is how the catastrophic scenario is triggered off.

All scientific community knows that propofol acts on the brain and not on the heart, and the doctors who testified at Murray’s trial completely ruled out a heart arrest as a complication of administering propofol.

However Dr. White said that in some cases the heart arrest could still be possible. Indeed, despite the coroner’s conclusion that Michael’s heart was clean of atherosclerosis and was surprisingly healthy and strong, accidents do happen. The possibility of this accident is probably as tiny as the chance of a brick falling on your head now but in theory it is still possible, isn’t it?

Though doctors say that this scenario never happens even in hospitals, unless the patient previously had a heart problem, in theory anything is possible and it is on this virtually non-existent scenario that Dr. White based his assumptions.

But what difference does it make whether it was a breathing failure or a heart arrest?

The difference is a fundamental one – when breathing stops first, propofol has full ten minutes to break up until the heart stops beating, and if the hearts stops first no metabolism takes place and all propofol that was in the body remains there as it is.

Do you remember the two pictures of Dr. Shafer’s simulations? On both pictures the dot line showed that propofol in the blood initially rose to a very high level – even in case of 25mg only – so if the heart stopped at that particular moment, the level of propofol in the blood could indeed be very high.

Only one doctor insisted that it could be a heart arrest

In the circumstances when all doctors say that it could be only a breathing arrest resulting from a huge quantity of propofol, but one doctor (Dr. White) says that it was a heart arrest resulting from the initial 25ml only, there was no other way to prove that Michael received too much propofol that caused his death but look into its level in the urine.

THE FINAL ARGUMENT

You remember that urine always keeps at least a little of propofol which gets there while the body is still functioning, and if the patient dies it simply stores the propofol already excreted into it. This way the bladder acts as a depositary of the propofol collected before, when the patient was still alive.  If propofol manages to get into the bladder in its original form it does not metabolize there and is stored as it is as metabolism takes place in the liver only.

The amount of propofol in Michaels’s bladder found on autopsy was 0,15 micrograms per ml which multiplied by the amount of urine recovered (approx. 500ml) made up 82,5mcg (micrograms).

This is a very tiny figure, especially if you consider that one microgram (mcg) is equal to 1/1000 of milligram (mg) and this indeed shows that practically all propofol is broken up by the liver and very little non-metabolized propofol reaches the bladder.

On the surface it looked like a huge amount of propofol (2000mg or more) infused in the blood could not produce the tiny quantity of only 0,0825mg in the urine. Logic suggested, at least to Dr. White, that if the propofol quantity found in the urine was tiny a similar tiny quantity should have been administered into the patient’s blood too.

However propofol is known to be vanishing extremely quickly and Dr. Shafer managed to find exact information about how much propofol vanishes and how much of it stays, and what is the exact ratio between the quantity injected into the patient’s blood and the quantity of unchanged propofol reaching the bladder.

Usually propofol reaches the bladder in a metabolized form with only a tiny fraction of original propofol going there, and at first scientists could not differentiate the original form of propofol from its metabolites. But eventually scientists learned how to differentiate the molecules of propofol in is original form from the molecules of its metabolites. And according to their estimations the amount of the original drug getting into urine is indeed incredibly tiny. They found that only 0,004% of the quantity of the original propofol infused into blood goes into the bladder.

And the autopsy report showed propofol in Michael’s urine exactly in its original form.

Now the only thing we need to do is take a calculator and see how much propofol was given to Michael if 82,5micrograms of it remained in the urine and this quantity made up only 0,004% of the original amount given. If 82,5mcg makes up 0,004% how much will be 100% of it?

My calculations brought me to 2062500 micrograms =  2062,5mg =  206ml of propofol.

This means that on the basis of the highly accurate scientific estimations we learned that the 82,5mcg of unchanged propofol in the urine could be produced only if Murray injected 206ml of propofol into Michael’s blood.

This amount is more than two bottles 100ml each and this quantity should have dripped into Michael’s blood while he was still alive as urine is produced only by a living body.

This makes all Valerie Wass’s talk about Michael dying of 25mg (2.5ml) ignorant, foolish and absurd. And though it would be ridiculous to go on looking into Wass’s theories further her self-injection idea is still worth discussing in order to silence all innuendoes about it.

NO CHANCES FOR A SELF-INJECTION THEORY

There is absolutely no way that Michael could make any injections himself.

The first thing we need to remember is that the moment a patient tries to self-inject himself with propofol he becomes unconscious almost immediately. However since an injection may be a bolus one and reaching the brain takes at least a minute we will disregard this argument as not a definitive one and proceed to the rest.

The primary reason why the self-injection scenario could never happen is that in order to inject himself with at least 200ml of propofol which he actually received, Michael would have had to make himself twenty  boluses 10ml each as the only syringes found in the room were two 10cc (10ml) ones.  Even the way it sounds it is totally ridiculous, so let me not comment on things which are impossible in principle.

The situation becomes even more impossible as Michael’s fingerprints were never found on any of those syringes, saline bags, propofol bottles, etc. In fact no Michael’s fingerprints were found on any of that medical equipment. As a side note let me state that someone else’s fingerprints were found on the empty saline bag with a slit on it but for some reason the prosecution did not explain whose fingerprints they were.

Lidocaine comes in 10ml bottles

Wass’s scenario is all the more impossible as propofol is usually diluted with lidocaine, a local anesthetic which makes the injection less painful. Propofol gives a terrible burning feeling, so injecting it in its pure form hurts very much. Making it without lidocaine would have made Michael scream with pain and hopefully this could have made Murray pay attention to his patient at last.

Let me also mention that a layperson will not cope even with a simple thing like drawing propofol into a syringe. Dr. Shafer made a special point of it that propofol comes in a glass bottle with a rubber stopper on it and when the needle pierces it all you can do is draw a couple of drops, after which no more liquid comes into the barrel because of the vacuum created inside. To overcome this obstacle some air should be pushed into the bottle. Therefore propofol is drawn by little bits by pushing the air inside through the needle and then drawing back.

By the way the syringe on the bedside table near Michael did not only miss his fingerprints on it  but it did not have the needle either.

Okay, even if we agreed that Michael Jackson self-injected himself with propofol and imagined the worst scenario possible – that he did it with a full 10ml (100mg) syringe made as a bolus (at once), Dr. Shafer proved in a separate computer simulation that the result of this scenario would be totally inconsistent with the findings of the autopsy report – so this version is also fully ruled out.

He showed that in this worst case scenario the respiratory arrest would be imminent but since the heart is still beating propofol continues to metabolize and 10 minutes later, when the heart stops and the level of propofol gets “fixed” in the blood, its quantity (0.7mcg) will still be much lower than the 2.6mcg really found in Michael’s veins:

Even if Michael had self-injected the FULL 10ml (100mg) syringe of propofol, by the time his heart stopped the level of propofol in his blood (0.7mcg) would not have come anywhere close to the 2,6mcg level found in the Femoral vein after his death

No, self-administering propofol via a syringe was impossible as none of the scenarios are workable.

But could he make it via a drip then? And could Michael stand up after the first 100ml bottle and replace it on the IV stand with another one?  And can anyone stand up and replace one bottle with another one without leaving any fingerprints on both of them? Can anyone administer propofol to himself without lidocaine and not scream at that? Or replace one bottle with another one if he has already died from the first bottle?

No, the whole thing is so ridiculous that it is not even worth discussing it any more though there are a dozen other reasons why Michael could not do it himself.

LIDOCAINE

There is one more point in Murray’s story which I would like to mention. It was never discussed at the trial but I personally always wondered about it. You have probably noticed that Murray said that he diluted propofol and lidocaine in the ratio of 1:1.

From what I’ve read about it lidocaine is never used in the equal proportion to propofol. The usual ratio is 1:10 (one part of lidocaine to 10 parts of propofol), and it is due to its minimal use of this local anesthetic that lidocaine comes in vials of 10ml only.

Murray most probably spoke of the incredible 1:1 ratio to conceal the fact that he had given Michael huge portions of propofol. The lidocaine bottles found in the room included two empty vials 10ml each and four more vials, three of which were half-full. So the cumulative quantity of all lidocaine used that day should be at least 30-35ml.

Among other things the number of lidocaine bottles found in the room may testify to the fact that Murray was making syringe injections several times, each time starting with a new bottle. Let me remind you that Lidocaine is generally used for making the initial injection as when the patient is put under the drip he does not feel the pain anyway and no longer needs lidocaine (however there might be variants here).

As I have said even a rough estimation of lidocaine shows that its cumulative quantity given by Murray to Michael was at least 30 ml and if we apply this quantity to propofol following the usual ratio of 1:10 we will come to at least 300ml of propofol administered that day.

But could Murray indeed dilute propofol in the proportion of 1:1 as he said he did? I doubt it very much. Unless he was using Michael as a rat for his experiments this thing is never done. The most I’ve seen in the science literature is 1:9 (9 parts of propofol mixed with one part of lidocaine) but even here scientists argue that it is no good as the effect of propofol could be diminished:

There have been reports in the literature indicating that the addition of lidocaine to Propofol in quantities greater than 20 mg lidocaine/200 mg Propofol results in instability of the emulsion which is associated with increases in globule sizes over time and (in rat studies) a reduction in anesthetic potency. Therefore, it is recommended that lidocaine be administered prior to Propofol administration or that it be added to Propofol immediately before administration and in quantities not exceeding 20 mg lidocaine/200 mg Propofol. http://www.drugs.com/pro/propofol.html

So since the 1:1 ratio is hardly possible, let me repeat that the most probable reason why Murray said he diluted lidocaine with propofol in equal parts is to create the impression that he administered propofol in the amount not higher than that of lidocaine.

Lidocaine could be easily calculated by the police on the basis of the vials left and if they had derived the quantity of propofol following the standard dilution formula this alone could have told them how much propofol was used.

HOW MUCH PROPOFOL WAS IT?

The amount of propofol administered to Michael that night must have been gigantic. Judging by lidocaine alone it was enormous. But the key evidence in this respect is the level of propofol in Michael’s blood and urine.

Roughly speaking the concentration of propofol in the blood mainly points to the amount of propofol Michael received after his death.  Why so? Because while the patient is alive most of the Propofol going into the body is breaking up and though it does accumulate in the body it is accumulating rather slowly (within hours).

After propofol stops dripping everything that built up in the body fully metabolizes within the next 5 minutes. Even if there is a breathing arrest the heart goes on beating for a period twice as long (10 minutes), and within this time all propofol should be gone from the system.

However all Michael’s tissues were loaded with propofol – he had propofol in every organ, even in his eyes. And this means that the drip went on even after his heart stopped. Propofol freely flowed into his body saturating him after his death with no one looking at him or taking care.

And the level of propofol in the urine shows how much propofol Michael received while he was still alive. Urine is produced only when the body is functioning, and this is when the residual propofol equivalent to 200ml went into the bladder. And it seems to me that this amount should be added to the propofol which accumulated in Michael’s blood after his death.

So how much propofol does it make all in all then? 300ml? Or even more?

And after that Valerie Wass says it was 25mg (2.5ml) only?

Valerie Wass wants us to think that there was no drip on that fateful night and Murray injected only one syringe, but does not explain how that dreadful amount of propofol could be found in Michael’s body. Michael is ruled out as even the biggest possible 10ml self-injection would not bring about a result even remotely close to the one found during the autopsy.

But if no dripping was involved the only other option left is that Murray injected syringe after syringe and did not stop even after the heart stopped. So does Wass want us to think that Murray committed a premeditated murder? And if she insists that it wasn’t Murray, then let him please name someone else who could have done it.

It would be great if Wass stopped retelling us Murray’s stories she so blindly believes in but tried to make Murray give truthful answers to questions we are indeed interested in. For example, what really happened the night when Michael died? And why was there a murmur of voices and a cough heard by Murray’s girlfriend on the phone when supposedly there was no one else there but Murray?  Or why were all video tapes from Michael’s home erased except for the moment when Murray arrived? And whose fingerprints were found on the saline bag with a propofol bottle inside it? And why doesn’t Murray tell us if anyone else entered the house after he arrived there?

In short we need to hear the answers and in case Valerie Wass really wants to do something for her client she should make him tell the truth instead of silencing him. Owing to people like Dr. Shafer we already know that Murray was grossly, unbelievable negligent towards Michael and that he uncontrollably gave him huge amounts of propofol without keeping to the very basic rules, but if he has anything else to tell us besides what we already know, let him tell the rest of it too.

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Related post:

• Conrad Murray’s trial – week 4. The brilliant Dr. Steven Shafer