Los Angeles prosecutors today charged Michael Jackson's physician Dr. Conrad Murray with involuntary manslaughter in the pop singer's death.
After an eight-month-long investigation, prosecutors charged the Houston-based cardiologist with allegedly administering a lethal cocktail of painkillers and anesthetics to the entertainer hours before he died on June 25.
If convicted, Murray faces up to four years in prison. Murray is expected to surrender at Los Angeles Airport Courthouse this afternoon. Many of Jackson's celebrity family members were seen entering the courthouse including his father Joe, mother Katherine, his brother Jermaine and sister LaToya.
A large contingent of reporters and camera crews dwarfed the cadre of fans who ringed the courthouse, some of whom carried signs calling for "Justice for Michael Jackson."
One fan carried a sign that read: "No special treatment for Conrad 'Murderer.'"
The charges come after weeks of negotiations between prosecutors and Murray's lawyers about when and where the doctor would make himself available to be indicted.
Murray, 56, has been in Los Angeles for the past two weeks, meeting with his defense team and waiting for the District Attorney to formally charge him.
Following an autopsy and the release of a much-anticipated toxicology report last fall, investigators concluded that Murray administered to Jackson, 50, the powerful anesthetic propofol and mixture of other sedatives that led to his death.
"Murray did unlawfully, and without malice, kill Michael Joseph Jackson…in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony; and in the commission of a lawful act which might have produced death, in an unlawful manner, and without due caution and circumspection," prosecutors said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Murray hired J. Michael Flanagan, an L.A.-based defense attorney, who is reportedly the only attorney in California to have ever won an acquittal on an involuntary manslaughter case involving propofol.
In 2004, Flanagan successfully defended a nurse, Amy Brunner, accused and ultimately acquitted of involuntary manslaughter.
Brunner was accused of leaving a syringe full of propofol out for another nurse to administer to an 80-year-old cancer patient who died within minutes of receiving the shot.