Michael Jackson’s former physician adds criminal attorney to legal team

Michael Jackson’s former personal physician hired a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney this week to help his existing legal team combat a potential manslaughter prosecution in the pop icon’s fatal overdose last summer.

Dr. Conrad Murray retained Glendale attorney J. Michael Flanagan on Tuesday, the physician’s lead lawyer, Ed Chernoff, confirmed.

Flanagan previously won a manslaughter acquittal for a nurse tried in what is believed to be the only other L.A. criminal case involving a death from propofol, the powerful anesthetic blamed in Jackson’s June 25 death.

Murray, a cardiologist, acknowledged giving the singer propofol, an anesthetic designed to render surgical patients immediately unconscious, as a sleeping aid the morning of his death, according to police affidavits.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled Jackson’s death a homicide caused by “acute propofol intoxication” and the use of sedatives.

Law enforcement officials identified Murray as the target of a manslaughter investigation less than a month after Jackson’s death, but six months later, no charges have been filed.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said prosecutors continue to assist Los Angeles Police Department investigators, but that no decision had been made about whether to charge Murray.

“We have not been formally presented with the case by the LAPD yet. . . . We do not have a pending case,” Gibbons said.

Flanagan, Murray’s new attorney, said involuntary manslaughter is “the only thing they could charge him with” and said the delay in bringing charges testifies to the difficulty of the case.

“It’s because it’s not a slam-dunk case,” he said. “There’s a lot of evidence to go over.”

Flanagan represented one of two nurses charged with involuntary manslaughter in 2004 for administering the anesthetic to a cancer patient without the authorization of an anesthesiologist.

The patient died. Flanagan’s client was acquitted. The other nurse pleaded no contest to a lesser charge.

harriet.ryan@latimes.com