AEG Trial Session 35: Michael Jackson’s insomnia was paralyzing

On this day, Dr. Charles Cizler’s testimony resumed. He said that since January, he had been working on the AEG case for one or two days each week. He said that reviewing Michael Jackson’s medical records showed him that MJ had difficulty sleeping during periods of his life. His insomnia wasn’t paralyzing most of the time, but it became much worse during rehearsals or when preparing for a tour. Cizler: “The main point here is that his sleep problem became severely worse during the tour or the preparation period for it. When he wasn’t involved in preparation or holding a tour, the problem wasn’t that serious, but when he was preparing for a tour or when he was holding a tour, his insomnia became paralyzing.” Cizler said that Michael’s anesthesia after receiving propofol was a drug-induced coma. He said that with propofol, Michael would enter a drug-induced coma that disrupted his natural sleep cycle and created severe insomnia. Yesterday, Michael Kascaf, the Jacksons’ attorney, had asked Cizler a 1,833-word question that took seventeen minutes. Kascaf wanted Cizler to give his opinion about Michael’s condition before death based on a number of statements. These statements were based on testimony presented in court, emails shown, and other designated documents. The company’s attorney objected to part of the information in this question, which was based on Murray’s confessions, and said there was no source for these statements other than Murray. The judge said that part of this information couldn’t be presented in court, but asked Kascaf to clarify and re-ask his question. The judge and attorneys’ discussion wasted an hour of court time, and this time Kascaf’s question lasted nineteen minutes. Cizler received $250 for listening to Kascaf’s first question yesterday and $300 today for listening to the clarification—almost twenty minutes. The company’s attorney’s objection was to part of Kascaf’s question that said Dr. Murray injected Michael with propofol every night for two months. In today’s session, Kascaf changed that part and said that Dr. Murray had purchased more than four gallons of propofol between April and June. There is evidence to prove this. Cizler said that four gallons equals 155,000 milliliters. He explained that an anesthesiologist uses only 20 to 30 milliliters of propofol to perform surgery and fully anesthetize a patient. (So the propofol purchased by Murray would have been enough for 7,750 hospital surgeries.) Cizler said that the results of Michael’s autopsy after death showed that the propofol present in his body was enough to perform a major abdominal surgery. On Friday, Cizler said the signs identified and discussed in court by MJ’s colleagues in his final days—such as his weakness in recalling songs, learning new choreography, weight loss, anxiety, loss of body temperature balance, and having suspicion toward people—meant that this man had been deprived of true sleep for a long period. Cizler attributes this deprivation of true sleep to the use of propofol. He said the details presented by Michael’s colleagues are very serious and disturbing. He said Michael’s need for a text-reading monitor to display songs he had sung for a lifetime was shocking and showed the enormous impact that lack of sleep had on his memory. Cizler: “The most successful stage manager of the era couldn’t read his own songs without help from a teleprompter. It’s shocking. And for me, that indicates a serious negative impact on his memory.” Cizler had said yesterday that lab mice can’t survive more than three weeks without full sleep. Today, he said he never wants to know how many days a human can live without sleep. He had said that if the mice’s sleep is experimentally disrupted and their REM sleep is taken away, they would live two more weeks—but they would still die after five weeks. This doctor said Michael was deprived of REM sleep due to propofol injections and lived for two months without REM sleep. He stated that if Michael hadn’t died from propofol, he would have died from insomnia shortly after. Cizler stated that if Michael’s insomnia problem had been identified and treated correctly, there would have been no disruption to the tour and Michael could have continued performing for years. He disqualified Dr. Murray and said this heart specialist certainly wasn’t qualified to identify and treat Michael’s sleep problem. During questions from Catherine Kahan, the company’s attorney, he said that the evidence shows two doctors tried to convince Michael to receive treatment for insomnia under the care of a specialist in that field, but Michael refused. Cizler said no one could force Michael to undergo treatment against his will. Cizler also said that the relationship between anesthesia and sleep is a new topic in medicine, and many studies have been conducted after Michael Jackson’s death. The company’s attorney pointed out that the autopsy results make it clear that Michael Jackson died from propofol poisoning, not from insomnia. Cizler accepted this, but when the defense attorney finished, he said that alongside propofol, contributing factors played a role in his death. In the end, the Jacksons’ attorney managed to get what he was looking for out of Cizler’s mouth. Michael Kascaf ultimately obtained a testimony from Cizler that had caused the company’s attorney to object yesterday. Cizler said he believes that during the two months leading up to Michael Jackson’s death, Dr. Murray would have put him into a coma every night with propofol. Source: eMJey.com / ABC7 & CNN