[h=1]Juror: We convicted Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, because he didn’t call 911 first[/h] [h=2]Blames doc for providing drugs and not having life-saving equipment on hand[/h] BY
Nancy Dillon
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, November 9 2011, 11:39 AM
LIONEL CIRONNEAU/AP
A juror in the Dr. Conrad Murray trial said she voted to convict him because he made a covert phone call to Michael Jackson’s handlers rather than dialing 911 in the moments after the drug-addled pop singer went into cardiac arrest.
Pool/Getty Images
Dr. Conrad Murry is being held without bail after his involuntary manslaughter conviction on Monday for the death of Michael Jackson.
LOS ANGELES -
Michael Jackson's doctor sealed his fate when he found the heavily sedated pop icon unresponsive and failed to call 911 immediately, a juror revealed Wednesday.
Debbie Franklin, a 48-year-old mother of two from Temple City, Calif., broke her silence on ABC's "Good Morning America" and described the nine hours of excruciating deliberations that led to
Dr. Conrad Murray's involuntary manslaughter conviction Monday.
She said the panel of seven men and five women did not immediately agree Friday, their first day hashing out the evidence.
"We took a vote and it was not unanimous, so we said let's think about it over the weekend and talk about it on Monday," she told GMA. "It was stressful. It was a lot of work. Yelling, everybody was talking."
She said it was Murray's actions, not Jackson's, that tipped the balance - particularly Murray's decision to leave a cryptic message for a member of Jackson's entourage rather than call 911 in the critical minutes after he found the
King of Pop not breathing with a slight pulse on June 25, 2009.
Murray, who never disputed that he gave Jackson the operating-room anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid, left his bedside for a bathroom break and then returned to find the "Thriller" singer in respiratory arrest.
He said he found Jackson unresponsive around noon. The first call to paramedics went out at 12:20 p.m.
"The three biggest things for us were the 911 call, not calling 911. That was a big issue, and not having the medical equipment in the room to put somebody under sedation and leaving the room,"
Franklin said.
She said the Houston cardiologist was responsible for providing a bedroom pharmacy without proper monitoring or resuscitative equipment and should have been watching the superstar's every breath.
"Even if Michael Jackson injected himself, which I don't think we believed, but we felt, even if he did, that wouldn't have mattered because Conrad Murray brought the situation there," she said. "He was the doctor. He was in charge."
She conceded Jackson "had a lot of issues…I believe he had addictions and dependence." But it didn't matter. Murray, 58, recklessly bent the rules when he gave Jackson propofol to fight the chronic insomnia that gripped him during rehearsals for his comeback tour, she said.
"I really think they didn't have a lot to work with," she said of Murray's defense lawyers. "They tried to do what they could with what they had."
Franklin said prosecutors were smart to set the bar low with a single count of involuntary manslaughter and not try for second-degree murder.
"We absolutely agree that he did not mean to do this," she told GMA. "We don't think he even had a motive to do this. We think it was something that he was doing that was careless that got out of hand."
She said she didn't feel bad that the judge denied Murray bail and had him led away in handcuffs.
"I never gave it a second thought," she said. "It didn't bother me."
But she's relieved her juror job is over and sentencing is up to the judge.
"I'm glad I don't have to make that decision," she said. "I really have no feeling one way of the other what the sentence is. We did our job."
The Grenada-born doctor faces up to four years in prison at his sentencing Nov. 29 and the loss of his career, at least in the U.S.
The doctor's California medical license already is suspended, and Texas officials expect to yank his privileges in the coming weeks.
"We've already initiated an investigation off his conviction,"
Leigh Hopper, spokeswoman for the Texas Medical Board, told the Daily News.
"He has the right to a full hearing. In something like this, I don't think the process would take very long because there's really no disputing the facts of the case. He was initially convicted, and state law dictates that the medical board suspend the license of someone initially convicted of a felony," she said. "If he appeals and then a judge upholds the verdict, that final conviction would lead to a revocation of his license."
Murray's Nevada license expired in July.
ndillon@nydailynews.com
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