Court dismisses case to have Michael Jackson doctor’s T&T license revoked

A com­plaint seek­ing to sus­pend or re­voke car­di­ol­o­gist Dr Con­rad Mur­ray’s tem­po­rary med­ical li­cence over his manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion in con­nec­tion with the death of pop su­per­star Michael Jack­son has been dis­missed.

Ear­li­er this week, a tri­bunal ap­point­ed by the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MBTT), chaired by at­tor­ney Shankar Bidaisee, de­liv­ered the de­ci­sion, which al­lows Mur­ray to con­tin­ue prac­tis­ing lo­cal­ly.

The out­come was not based on a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the mer­its of the com­plaint, but rather on the re­cusal of the tri­bunal’s for­mer chair­man, Dr Ian Ram­nar­ine, af­ter he im­prop­er­ly ap­proached a wit­ness.

Bidaisee, who wrote the de­ci­sion, said: “The rul­ing does not de­ter­mine the mer­its of the com­plaint nor ex­on­er­ate the Re­spon­dent (Dr Mur­ray) of the sub­stan­tive com­plaint.”

“This de­ci­sion un­der­scores the fun­da­men­tal re­quire­ment that dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings must be con­duct­ed fair­ly and im­par­tial­ly, in a man­ner that main­tains pub­lic con­fi­dence in its process­es,” he added.

On June 25, 2009, Jack­son, 50, died at his Los An­ge­les home from car­diac ar­rest caused by an over­dose of propo­fol and ben­zo­di­azepines.

The med­ica­tion had been ad­min­is­tered by Grena­di­an-born Dr Mur­ray to help Jack­son sleep.

Dr Mur­ray was charged with in­vol­un­tary manslaugh­ter and was con­vict­ed by a Cal­i­for­nia ju­ry in No­vem­ber 2011.

Al­though he was sen­tenced to four years in prison, he was re­leased af­ter serv­ing just un­der half of his sen­tence, part­ly be­cause of prison over­crowd­ing and good be­hav­iour.

In May 2023, Dr Mur­ray opened DCM Med­ical In­sti­tute in El So­cor­ro.

The dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against Dr Mur­ray were based on a com­plaint brought by the Board un­der Sec­tion 24 of the Med­ical Board Act in June 2018.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, the Board is en­ti­tled, af­ter an in­quiry, to cen­sure, rep­ri­mand, sus­pend or re­voke a prac­ti­tion­er’s tem­po­rary li­cence if the prac­ti­tion­er has been con­vict­ed of a crime or has en­gaged in in­fa­mous or dis­grace­ful pro­fes­sion­al con­duct.

When Dr Mur­ray’s tri­al be­fore the tri­bunal com­menced in April, his lawyer, Kiel Takalals­ingh, took is­sue with de­lays in rais­ing the com­plaint and con­duct­ing the dis­ci­pli­nary process.

Takalals­ingh cross-ex­am­ined for­mer MBTT sec­re­tary Dr Pe­ter Bag­gan and got him to ad­mit that he had been ap­proached by Dr Ram­nar­ine to pro­vide a wit­ness state­ment in the mat­ter.

Takalals­ingh im­me­di­ate­ly called for the pro­ceed­ings to be paused so the tri­bunal could con­sid­er the im­pli­ca­tions of the ad­mis­sion.

Af­ter the hear­ing was ad­journed, Dr Ram­nar­ine ad­mit­ted that he had made the ap­proach be­cause he felt Dr Bag­gan’s ev­i­dence would be use­ful.

De­spite the ex­pla­na­tion, Bidaisee and the two oth­er doc­tors on the tri­bunal raised con­cerns about Dr Ram­nar­ine’s con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Al­though Dr Ram­nar­ine even­tu­al­ly agreed to re­cuse him­self, the re­main­ing mem­bers had to con­sid­er whether the case could pro­ceed in light of what had tran­spired.

In his rul­ing, Bidaisee found that a fair-mind­ed and in­formed ob­serv­er would con­clude that Dr Ram­nar­ine was bi­ased.

“The Tri­bunal finds that this con­duct went be­yond an or­di­nary ad­min­is­tra­tive in­ter­ac­tion,” Bidaisee said.

“This con­cern is height­ened by the sig­nif­i­cance of Dr Bag­gan’s ev­i­dence, his knowl­edge of the rel­e­vant records and the im­por­tance of his cred­i­bil­i­ty to the Com­plainant’s case,” he added.

Bidaisee and the oth­er mem­bers al­so found that they could not con­tin­ue to pre­side over the case in Dr Ram­nar­ine’s ab­sence.

“The re­main­ing mem­bers of the Tri­bunal con­sid­ers it pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair and con­trary to nat­ur­al jus­tice to pro­ceed with hear­ing and de­ter­min­ing the ev­i­dence of DR Bag­gan de­spite know­ing the same was pro­cured by the then Chair­man of the Tri­bunal on be­half a par­ty to the pro­ceed­ings,” he said.

Dr Mur­ray was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Kristy Mo­han.