California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has lobbied the state’s medical board to request that a judge revoke Dr. Conrad Murray’s state medical license at a hearing on April 5th. When Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson in February, the judge did not ban Murray from practicing medicine in California, but warned him against “sedating people.” Jackson’s death was ruled a homicide by “acute propofol intoxication.”
“We will argue in court that Murray was reckless in giving Jackson such a dangerous drug and has demonstrated a serious lack of judgment that should prohibit him from practicing medicine,” Brown said according to CNN.
The Attorney General’s move comes just days after reports that Jackson’s bodyguard Alberto Alvarez told officials that Murray stopped administering CPR after the singer went into cardiac arrest on June 25th, 2009 to hide the vials of Propofol, which investigators found two days after Jackson’s death in a plastic bag in a closet at the Jackson residence. Alvarez also alleges that two of Jackson’s children also witnessed the CPR efforts, a new revelation in the case.
Even if Attorney General Brown successfully prohibits Murray from practicing medicine in California, the ruling wouldn’t make much of an impact outside of further discrediting the doctor: He already has no offices or patients in California, and would still be allowed to resume his practices in Texas and Nevada, as he has since last fall. Still, a California medical board executive will be in court at Murray’s next hearing to argue Murray “poses a danger to the public health, safety and welfare” if allowed to continue practicing medicine, the filing said.
Murray’s lawyer Ed Chernoff questioned the timing of the Attorney General’s request to prevent Murray from practicing in California, as well as the leaked documents revealing Alvarez’s testimony. “We would ask the public to reserve judgment until after the people’s witnesses are placed under oath and subjected to the rigors of cross-examination. We are confident that a fair trial will ferret out the truth,” Chernoff said. If Murray is convicted, he faces up to four years in prison.
