LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson was clinically dead when he arrived at a hospital and two emergency room doctors said they thought it was futile to attempt to revive him. His doctor, however, insisted that they try.
Both doctors, testifying at Dr. Conrad Murray’s involuntary-manslaughter trial Monday, said Murray failed to tell them he had been giving Jackson the anesthetic propofol or when Jackson had been medicated or stopped breathing.
“He said he did not have any concept of time, that he did not have a watch,” said Dr. Thao Nguyen, a cardiologist at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson was taken on June 25, 2009.
“Dr. Murray asked that we not give up easily and try to save Michael Jackson’s life,” she said. “… In Dr. Murray’s mind, if we called it quits, we would be giving up easily.”
Nguyen said Murray “sounded desperate and he looked devastated.” But, she said, without knowing how much time had passed since he stopped breathing, resuscitation was a remote hope.
“It was not too little too late,” she said. “It was a case of too late. I feared that time was not on Mr. Jackson’s side.”
Murray, 58, has pleaded not guilty. Authorities say Murray administered the fatal dose and acted recklessly by providing Jackson the drug as a sleep aid at his home when it is supposed to be administered in a hospital. The defense argues that Jackson gave himself an additional dose of the drug when Murray was out of the room.
Nguyen and Dr. Richelle Cooper, who oversaw Jackson’s care in the emergency room, said Murray never mentioned that he had given the singer the propofol. They said he told them that he had given two doses of lorazepam, also known as Ativan, trying to get him to sleep.
“Did he ever mention propofol to you?” Deputy District Attorney David Walgren asked Nguyen.
“Absolutely not,” she said in a firm voice.
Before leaving the stand, Nguyen said, “I’ve never heard of propofol being used outside of a hospital.” In cross-examination, defense attorney Michael Flanagan was able to get Cooper to say that, even if they had known about the propofol, they could not have saved Jackson’s life.
“Michael Jackson had died long before he became my patient,” she said. “It is unlikely with that information I could have done something that would have changed the outcome.”
