Spokeswoman: Michael Jackson’s doctor to surrender Friday, whether a case is filed or not

Rep: Jackson doctor to surrender Friday regardless

LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson’s doctor plans to surrender to authorities Friday, regardless of whether prosecutors had filed a case against him, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The assertion came after the legal team for Dr. Conrad Murray said they were tired of waiting for word from prosecutors about when he would be charged. Murray, who has a practice in Houston, has been in Los Angeles for the past week and available to surrender since Tuesday.

“We are going to be at the courthouse at 1:30 (p.m.) for his surrender,” said Miranda Sevcik, spokeswoman for Murray’s legal team. “We see no reason to perpetuate the arbitrary situation any longer.”

The district attorney’s office has not confirmed if or when it will be charging Murray, though prosecutors have been reviewing the case for weeks. Murray’s team sees a charge as inevitable, Sevcik said.

“We know he’s going to be charged with involuntary manslaughter and we are ready with a counterargument,” Sevcik said. “He’s not guilty — that’s our argument.”

It remains to be seen whether the bizarre prospect of Murray trying to surrender without a criminal case being filed will come to pass.

The move follows three days of negotiations in which Murray’s lawyers have tried to arrange with prosecutors for the Houston doctor to surrender for booking and arraignment.

Those plans were derailed by haggling between prosecutors and law enforcement officials over whether the physician should be arrested or allowed to turn himself in.

Officials from the Los Angeles Police Department, which spent the past seven months investigating Murray, were unhappy with the idea of him surrendering and wanted to go to the residence he was staying at to arrest him, a law enforcement official close to the investigation told The Associated Press.

Various factors weighed into the desire to arrest Murray, including the possibility he might flee before arraignment, just as O.J. Simpson did, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. Police officials also worried it could appear Murray was being given special treatment if he was allowed to turn himself in.

The official said the district attorney’s office opposed an early plan for detectives to make the arrest Friday morning, upsetting police higher-ups, and negotiated with Murray’s attorneys to allow the doctor to turn himself in.

District attorney’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons could not immediately confirm if Murray would surrender Friday.

Chernoff told the AP earlier Thursday that an arrest would be purely for the benefit of news cameras.

“It’s a waste of time, it’s just a show,” Chernoff said. “There’s no reason to handcuff a guy, drag him downtown so you can take a photo when he’s been sitting here for a week waiting to turn to himself in.”

Gibbons denied there was any discord between the Police Department and the district attorney’s office and said police and prosecutors had been fully cooperating since the case began.

“There is no big dispute,” Gibbons said. “We are getting along fine.”

Jackson, 50, died June 25 at his rented Los Angeles mansion while under the care of Murray, a cardiologist with practices in Houston and Las Vegas.

Three law enforcement officials have told the AP prosecutors plan to charge Murray with involuntary manslaughter, alleging he gave Jackson the powerful anesthetic propofol to help him sleep but that instead led to his death.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

It’s unusual for the district attorney’s office to negotiate a surrender, with such talks usually occurring in high-profile cases.

Attorney Mark Geragos, who has represented Jackson and a string of other celebrities, said defense lawyers in such cases want to shield their clients from the embarrassing “perp walk,” where a suspect is paraded before cameras in handcuffs.

“It’s to let some people maintain some shred of dignity,” Geragos said.

Several other celebrity attorneys, including Harland Braun and M. Gerald Schwartzbach, said they couldn’t understand why the LAPD would want to arrest Murray if he was being cooperative.

“Otherwise, you are deliberately arresting someone to make a statement,” Braun said. “It would reflect poorly on the prosecution if they don’t let him surrender.”

Associated Press writers Linda Deutsch and Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.