Michael Jackson Doctor Pleads Not Guilty To Involuntary Manslaughter

Conrad Murray's trial slated to start March 28.
By Gil Kaufman


Dr. Conrad Murray appears in court on Tuesday in Los Angeles, California
Photo: Irfan Khan-Pool/ Getty Images

Michael Jackson's former personal physician Dr. Conrad Murray entered a plea of not guilty to charges of involuntary manslaughter in the June 2009 death of the pop star at his arraignment on Tuesday morning (January 25).

According to the Los Angeles Times, when asked by judge Michael Pastor how he pleaded to the charge, Murray said, "Your honor, I am an innocent man." When Pastor interrupted and asked Murray what his plea was, the cardiologist said, "Therefore, I plead not guilty."

The brief hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court ended with Pastor setting a March 28 date for the start of a trial in the case. Murray faces a maximum of four years in prison if convicted, and the Times noted that he surprised the judge by invoking his right to a speedy trial, which meant the case would have to begin by late March. Pastor noted the rarity of a defendant asking to have a speedy trial, then set jury selection for the week of March 28 and said he was inclined to allow television coverage of the trial that the defense expects will last two months.

Lawyers for Murray have maintained his innocence all along, saying he did not do anything that "should have" caused the 50-year-old pop icon's death. The Los Angeles County Coroner's office determined that Jackson died of an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol mixed with a cocktail of other sedatives.

Murray has admitted to administering propofol to Jackson in the hours before the singer's death, but the defense appears to be gearing up to claim that it was Jackson who administered the final, fatal dose of the drug after he woke in a panic from a fitful night of sleep.

During a preliminary hearing earlier this month to determine if there was enough evidence to hold Murray over for trial, the physician's attorneys said that there was evidence Jackson injected or drank a fatal amount of the drug when the doctor was not looking.

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Lady Gaga Fans Launch Twitter War With Black Keys Drummer

Patrick Carney earned the wrath of Little Monsters by comparing Gaga to Madonna on Twitter.
By James Montgomery


Lady Gaga
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images

Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney is a man who seems to grasp the power and purpose of Twitter — namely, using it to mess with Bravo TV star Bethenny Frankel and profess his love for condiments. So it was probably a bit of a shock when, after writing a seemingly innocuous tweet about Lady Gaga, he bore the full brunt of her (very angry) Little Monsters.

It all started last month, when Carney sized up Gaga's "Saturday Night Live" performance by writing, simply, "Madonna is killing it!" The comment went largely unnoticed by Gaga's fans, and Carney returned to important things like tweeting with Ke$ha about shrimp. But then, he dared to compare Gaga to Madonna once again, and, to borrow a phrase from Calvin Tran, "Oh, here go hell come."

Gaga's fans picked up on the tweet, and soon began inundating Carney's Twitter account with a steady torrent of vicious hate that quickly escalated to a full-on downpour of acrimony. So, he did what any self-respecting Twitter-head would do: retweeted the best of the worst.

In fact, all day Monday (June 6), Carney's Twitter account was nothing but a stream of profanity-laced, poorly-punctuated vitriol from Little Monsters, who called him "an ugly ass bitch," compared him to "the kid in the wheelchair on 'Glee' " and even threatened him with bodily harm.

For his part, Carney helped stoke the flames by pointing out that Gaga's anti-bullying message didn't really seem to be translating to her fans.

"Hey, little monsters! Everyone knows lady gaga sounds nothing at all like Madonna. I was joking! I am so depressed," he wrote, adding that he was heading to Red Lobster.

The tweets don't seem to be losing steam too quickly. As of Tuesday morning (June 7), Carney was still RT'ing some of the zestier messages he'd received from Gaga fans, and he summed up the whole experience by complaining that @Bethenny had replied to one of his brother's tweets, but not his (link), proving that, much like life, the Twitter-verse is, in fact, cyclical.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1665300/lady-gaga-black-keys.jhtml

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