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Michael Jackson - Source: Reuters -
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Even if Dr Conrad Murray, the sawbones who was with Michael Jackson the night he died, is charged, a large segment of the population in the US will swear that he is innocent.
They will argue that he is being sacrificed on the same altar that Michael Jackson was stretched out on.
The crime? Being successful, while black.
This opinion will rarely be expressed in the mainstream broadcast media, though it will be tantalisingly alluded to on that giant informational bordello otherwise known as cable news. And it will be widely discussed on blogs, in chatrooms, and in innumerable misspelled texts, and IMs.
It will form the substance of the defence, should Dr Murray face charges, and it will taint the outcome of any trial.
We stumbled upon the belief that the law is a racist outside the Jackson family compound in Encino last year. Fans had gathered outside around what I and my colleagues like to call a "makeshift shrine" at the front gate. Roll tape, and start interviewing. A woman said that Dr Murray was a murderer.
Another man (and I think the gender here is important) said that he was being set up. Murray was taking a fall for others, shadowy forces that would remain hidden. "Same thing happened to OJ," he said.
OJ Simpson, a black ex-footballer and actor (he was in The Towering Inferno) is now doing time for armed robbery and kidnapping in Nevada, but his trial and acquittal in 1995 for the murder of his wife Nicole, and Ronald Goldman was a defining event for Californians.
It was a trial stained with America's racial woes.
In the depictions of justice you see outside many courts in the US, she is blind-folded. But many Americans don't believe she is colour-blind. They're not wrong. Accurate figures are sketchy, but the likelihood is that if you're a black male in your prime, you'll go to prison. The Pew Centre did a study in 2007 that said that blacks were four times as likely to be incarcerated. In 2006, it was estimated that 41% of the US prison population was black.
So the conspiracy theorists aren't making everything up.
This is sad, and funny. If you're unafraid of the word m%$#*@#^, and other urban-associated Ebonics, then search YouTube for a very droll Dave Chappelle standup routine on black anger, OJ Simpson's, and Michael Jackson's innocence.
Back to Conrad Murray. With the publication of the amended Michael Jackson death certificate, that now includes the notes that the singer died from "acute propofol intoxication" and "intravenous injection by another", once again the chorus is rising that Dr Murray will face charges.
Adding to the voices (sopranos, largely) is the information that Murray has retained the services of J. Michael Flanagan, a lawyer who defended Britney Spears in a hit-and-run case. The Associated Press reports that he successfully defended a nurse who was acquitted in a LA trial over the death of a patient who had received propofol.
The portents are irrefutable, aren't they?
If you think you've heard this before, you're right.
I - and many others - confidently predicted shortly after the 9/11 of entertainment that was the Jackson death, that Murray would soon be banged up by the LAPD. Months passed, the investigation ground on, oblivious to the demands of the media for an image of closure: A perp walk of the shackled Murray.
Excuse me while I go out on a limb again. Dr Murray will be charged. The verdict of the trial will produce joy and outrage. The US prison statistics, and the racial imbalance contained therein, won't alter.
Read more of Tim Wilson's blogs.
