Dr. White spoke about the safety of small doses of propofol, saying they “have very translucent effects. This is a dose that might be used to produce a little bit of anxiety relief, a little bit of sleepiness.”
He then countered the testimony of prosecution’s key witness Dr. Steven Shafer, saying, “With the average patient, they would probably be dead. At the very least, they would be comatose for a number of hours. It represents an enormous amount of lorazepam. I can’t imagine anyone who would not be asleep after receiving 40 mg of lorazepam over a five-hour period.”
Dr. White performed a demonstration in court of how to draw propofol, saying it “takes some effort,” while going on to show how Jackson could possibly have self-administered the drug.
He then rejected the notion that a propofol IV drip—aka “the suspension method”—set up by Murray could have been the star’s cause of death, saying, “You would need some mechanism to deliver the drug to the patient. You would need a mechanism to hold this large bottle of propofol. This handle that was found at the crime scene had not been used until Mr. Walgren opened it in the courtroom.”
He also said that he had never heard of anyone using the method described in court and noted that there was “zero evidence of an infusion.” He concluded that it would have to have been a self-injection of propofol that killed the star.
The prosecution’s cross-examination of White begins Monday morning.
