Jermaine: I hope Conrad Murray is haunted by what he’s done
Brother's despair as Michael Jackson's doctorgets four years
AS much as the headlines may say otherwise, what happened yesterday was not justice.
True justice shouldn't feel as empty and pointless as this.
"Justice" is not having some clown of a doctor act so criminally negligent with Michael's life that he ends up killing him . . . then receives such a pitiful sentence.
That's not natural justice.
That's "justice" on paper for the prosecutors and courts to record as another conviction secured.
For us as a family, it feels like justice — in the true, hard-hitting, let-the-punishment-match-the-crime sense of the word — has been denied by a technicality.
Let me tell you what justice should have — and could have — looked like: Dr Conrad Murray charged with, and convicted of, second-degree murder and sent down for decades. A life incarcerated for the life lost because of his reckless choices, inept skills and breathtaking disregard of the human life in his solo care.
As someone who sat through the evidence at trial before Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, I know there was enough legal justification to charge this case as second-degree murder.
In the US, the malice is deemed "implied" if a person's negligence is so unbelievably reckless. As Murray's was.
I also know the District Attorney's office in LA seriously considered this route. But they opted for the less risky, more conviction-likely, safer option when the overwhelming evidence screamed for a stronger charge.
That is why, when I watched Murray being sentenced at LA Superior Court yesterday, I felt more like shrugging my shoulders than punching the air.
Because I was witnessing the due process go through the motions for the soft sentence that involuntary manslaughter carries.
I don't blame Judge Michael Pastor. The maximum sentence could only be four years by law. From the start, this case, its truth and the wider circumstances leading up to Michael's death, have been placed in a straitjacket.
Judge Pastor's hands were tied and he gave him the maximum sentence, but four years feels woefully insufficient.
What I appreciated was how the judge "disassociated" himself from all suggestions that Michael would have died with or without Murray's involvement.
That lie, that Michael somehow self-administered or contributed to his own death, was sent to jail with the rest of Murray's lies. I just hope that for every long day that Murray does serve in jail, he is haunted by what he's done in the same way we've been haunted by what he didn't do — keep Michael healthy and alive.
Murray's recklessness has robbed our family of a son, brother and uncle.
It has deprived Prince, Paris and Blanket of a wonderful father who doted on them.
It has deprived the world of a genius artist whose music would have kept on evolving.
And it denied Michael the greatest comeback of all time — the comeback he had imagined for such a long time.
He was on the verge of turning over a new leaf in his life.
The This Is It concerts in London were just the beginning of a five-year plan to turn things around and restore some financial security. He was even finalising a $15million (£9.6million) downpayment on a home in Las Vegas.
This payment was one of the last things he spoke about at rehearsals before heading home for that ill-fated, sleepless night.
Murray's recklessness denied Michael the new, exciting future he had his heart set on. I have seen some ill-informed reactions that have painted Murray as some kind of "scapegoat" and that my brother's death was due to his "addiction to drugs".
None of which is true — as all evidence proved.
For the record, Michael had no dependency on the painkiller demerol at the time of his death, as was claimed in court.
It's true that he had a known drug dependency in 1993 and it continued to mess with him for almost a decade. But circumstances in 2001 did not kill him in 2009, despite Murray's defence team doing its best to link the past to the future.
Bottom line: There was no demerol found in his house or in his body. So much for him being "an addict".
Michael, a chronic insomniac, died because he wanted to sleep, not because he wanted to get high, and he trusted Murray to ensure this happened by administering an unorthodox measure — the anaesthetic propofol.
Michael regarded this sleep-inducing drug as the only effective solution to an insomnia triggered by touring.
Propofol is like a gun — safe in the right hands but in the wrong hands, it's deadly. Michael placed his life in Murray's wrong hands.
One of the toughest aspects of the trial was realising how saveable Michael was.
Had Murray monitored him, instead of wandering off to ring his girlfriends, he'd have seen that Michael had stopped breathing.
Had he had the standard life-saving equipment and rang 911 and not stalled for 15 inexplicable minutes, there was always a real chance of life. Had he not kept hidden from paramedics the vital fact he'd administered propofol. Had he been a trained professional who knew what he was doing, Michael would still be alive today.
I remain haunted by the endless list of "Had he done this . . . "
I also remain haunted by the wider truths that hide beneath the surface of the Murray case.
This extra, disturbing information is what I discovered when writing my tribute memoir You Are Not Alone: Michael, Through A Brother's Eyes.
I received some criticism for the timing of the book, but I not only wanted to document the truth about Michael as a human being, I wanted fans to understand what we, the family, have learned about what really happened at the This Is It rehearsals.
It was here — behind the scenes and unseen in the official movie — that Michael's body first issued distress signals about the gradual poisoning by propofol.
It was being administered to such an extent that it turned my brother's body toxic. He was, in effect, a dead man walking long before he died.
Michael collapsed on stage, had to be helped up steps, half his body was hot and half was cold and he didn't even have the strength to lift a lightweight prop during a routine for Thriller.
Something was seriously wrong, but a collective attitude of "the show must go on" prevailed. No doubt assisted by Murray's lies that Michael was in fine health.
I think the story behind his decline in health and his treatment by certain people — topics that were never fully explored at trial because of the narrow scope of evidence — is troubling.
From what eyewitnesses shared with me for the book, too many people kept their eye on the prize of a money-spinning concert and lost sight of the frail human being at its centre.
Based on the dire condition Michael was in, This Is It should have been shut down by June 20. In other words, he was saveable long before June 25 when he died.
For us as a family, this remains part of a wider neglect of Michael. It is within the arena of a wrongful death civil lawsuit against the concert promoter AEG which is where some wider truths will, I hope, be examined.
The conviction and sentencing of Murray is the first step towards a greater justice.
Nothing can bring Michael back. Nothing can change the meagre reality surrounding Murray's sentencing. But it is our duty to his memory to bring out the truth of what happened to him.
Maybe then we'll start to feel better vindicated. Maybe then we'll feel less empty.
Maybe then we'll be able to rest, knowing "truth" is sometimes the definition of true justice.
