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Dr. Conrad Murray in Court

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Within minutes, the manslaughter verdict of Dr. Conrad Murray will be read, ending a six week trial to determine whether the $150,000 a month cardiologist Michael Jackson hired to administer the pop star’s insomnia drug of choice, Propofol, is guilty of killing him, or whether the pop star was an addict gave who gave himself the fatal dose.

“Every single doctor that testified in this case said they would never do what Conrad Murray did,” Deputy District Attorney David Walgren told jurors in closing arguments last Thursday.

But defense attorneys have argued the superstar did himself in, taking powerful painkillers for years, and creating a “perfect storm” of drugs inside his body that led to his death on June 25, 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Knox: Free, Conviction Overturned

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, © www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

With Amanda Knox’s murder conviction reversed, as the appeals court cited faulty DNA evidence, and reports emerged of her prosecutor under fire for misconduct in other cases, it made me wonder if a tough American lawyer I watched tangle with Italian justice a few years back might have made a difference.

Had Gloria Allred been willing or able to take on Amanda Knox’s cause, might her media librettos have raised enough hell to expose Italy’s judicial dysfunction as she did after the murder of a California woman caught in its macho of indifference?

She made a small dent five years ago, but it was too late for Toni Dykstra.

Here’s what I remember:

It was 7 AM on the last Friday in September when the gray Lancia rolls down Via Sistina and pulls up to the five-star InterContinental hotel. Rome is waking up to the aroma of rich espresso laced with exhaust fumes and to the furies of an American feminist lawyer on a mission. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Knox Verdict Reversed

By Art Harris, The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

Amanda Knox was acquitted today of a murder in Italy that gripped Americans, putting Italian justice on trial as its court of appeals threw out her earlier conviction, ruling contaminated DNA evidence had wrongly put her behind bars for four years.

As the judge in Perugia, Italy announced she was free, she seemed to slump in shock, as the appeals court dismissed a 26 year prison sentence that went along with the conviction for the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher.

Knox insisted she was innocent, said Italian police had twisted her statements during 50 hours of grueling and virtually framed her and her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for slashing the throat of a fellow student who had treated her kindly. Read the rest of this entry »

Did Dr. Murray do it, or did MJ do it to himself?

From The Bald Truth, (c) www.artharris.com, all rights reserved

From a gruesome photo of his dead body to an audio tape his doctor made of the slurring superstar, high on something, prosecutors in the Conrad Murray manslaughter trial portray Michael Jackson’s doctor as callous, greedy and negligent in treating the pop star’s chronic insomnia with a powerful anesthetic called propofol in 2009 as he was preparing for an ambitious world tour.

That’s what killed him, prosecutors said in gut-wrenching opening argument Tuesday, powerful and damning, detailing how the Houston cardiologist demanded $5 million to close up his money losing practice to travel and care for Jackson as his solo patient, then settled on $150,000 a month when rebuffed.

Only he never signed the contract, and never was paid, his late manager told me, but still proceeded to give Jackson what he wanted–the powerful anesthetic propofol–so he could get sleep that was eluding him, affecting his ability to rehearse and perhaps threatening his “This Is It” Tour.

(Hear Jackson slurring on audio tape made by Dr. Murray on the next page) Read the rest of this entry »