http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1304/02/pmt.01.htmlTRANSCRIPTS
PIERS MORGAN LIVE
Inmate Freed by Mistake; Michael Jackson Family Lawsuit; NRA Plan for Guns in Schools; News on Late Night Wars
Aired April 2, 2013 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.PIERS MORGAN, CNN HOST: Tonight, you just heard Conrad Murray. This is what Michael Jackson's mother says.
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KATHERINE JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOTHER: He did a terrible thing. And it might have been others involved, I don't know that, but I feel that.
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MORGAN: Now she's suing the company that produced Michael's comeback for $40 billion. It says billion with a B. Does she have a case?
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MORGAN: Why have you given me the big exclusive interview?
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MORGAN: Good evening. This is PIERS MORGAN LIVE. And a lot coming up on the Michael Jackson case. An extraordinary interview with Dr. Conrad Murray with Anderson Cooper conducted earlier. We begin in Colorado tonight, where investigators are faced with the question. How could it have happened? How could a man who was behind bars for robbery and menacing who was written up 23 times for disciplinary issues behind bars, who was once a member of a white supremacist prison gang, who threatened to kill guards and beat up other inmates? How could someone like that be set free four years too soon on a technicality, a mistake, an accident?
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Coming next, why Michael Jackson's mother is suing for $40 billion. Who's to blame for the death of the king of pop? I'll ask his former attorney.
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ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, CNN'S AC 360: At the heart of this trial, of the AEG trial, is a simple question. Were you an AEG employee, someone they had a responsibility for, or were you an employee of Michael Jackson? Can you answer that question?
VALERIE WASS, DR. CONRAD MURRAY'S LAWYER: I don't want Dr. Murray to answer that question.
COOPER: OK.
CONRAD MURRAY, MICHAEL JACKSON'S PHYSICIAN: No, I cannot. Not at this time.
COOPER: Okay. I understand that. Can I ask you, do you know -- I mean, do you know the answer to that question?
MURRAY: Absolutely.
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MORGAN: Anderson Cooper just a few minutes ago talking to Conrad Murray and asking him the key question, who hired him? Murray's lawyer wouldn't let him answer, but the Jackson family is suing concert promoter AEG, saying the company is to blame for hiring Murray in the first place.
Joining me now, a man who knows Michael Jackson pretty well better than most people. Thomas Mesereau, who represented him, of course, during his molestation trial. Tom, fascinating interview that he had there with Anderson Cooper. What did you make of it, in particular that first clip there which I guess is into the key of all this. Who was employing Conrad Murray to be a practitioner for Michael Jackson?
THOMAS MESEREAU, MICHAEL JACKSON'S FORMER ATTORNEY: Well, there's no question in my mind, Piers, that the concert promoter employed Conrad Murray. Michael Jackson may have introduced Murray to them. But they had their lawyers draft an employment agreement, they sent that agreement to Murray to sign, he signed it. Apparently there's e-mail correspondence where they're admitting they had employed him. And I think they'll have a tough time getting out of that position.
MESEREAU: How will that affect the litigation that's about to start tomorrow with the family led by Michael's mother suing for $40 billion? How will that affect that, if you assume that what you've just said is correct, which I concur with? MESEREAU: I don't think this Conrad Murray interview is going to affect that case at all. I think everyone knows that Murray was incompetent. He was convicted of criminal negligence. He caused the death of Michael Jackson.
The question is, was AEG, the concert promoter, also negligent, and they can't just hide behind Conrad Murray. I think there's an e-mail trail where they're taking responsibility for hiring him. They're instructing him what to do, they're reminding him that they pay him his money. I think they'll have a tough time. I think Katherine and the kids have a strong case.
MORGAN: Let's listen to another clip. This is where he talks about Propofol, which is of course the killer drug.
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MURRAY: Yes, indeed, I did order Propofol to his home, but I was not the one that brought Propofol into his home. I met him at his own stash. I did not agree with Michael. But Michael felt it was not an issue because he had been exposed to it for years and he knew exactly how things worked. And given the situation at the time, it was my approach to try to get him off of it. I never knew he was an addict. He was going to Dr. Kline's office and being loaded up with humongous -- you know, levels of Demerol. That was his addiction. And basically, this was causing his insomnia and -- because that's a huge side effect.
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MORGAN: And you hear -- I listened to Conrad Murray when he came out. He obviously didn't testify in his case but he then gave an interview to the Today Show at the time, and it's sort of more of the same, I guess. Very much you can't blame me, you know.
But in the end, he was the doctor who was being paid to care personally for Michael Jackson. It all comes down to him, doesn't it, in the end?
MESEREAU: Well, not all of it. He is the doctor that treated Michael Jackson. He's responsible for his death. The question is, should AEG, the concert promoter, have hired him? Should they have supervised him properly, and did they have enough information to know that he was a danger to Michael Jackson, should they have fired him?
There are three theories the plaintiffs are relying on. They're saying they negligently hired him, they negligently supervised him and they negligently kept him around. Three different theories. They had agreed to provide medical equipment. Murray actually had asked for a CPR equipment, portable equipment. He asked for a gurney. He wanted saline. He wanted syringes. They agreed to provide this equipment to him and never did.
So, I think the negligent supervision issue and negligently keeping him on when it was obvious he was deficient and they had problems with him, I think is going to be a big hurdle to overcome. MORGAN: I have two clips to play. This is from interviews with Jermaine Jackson and then Latoya Jackson. Both talking about the people around Michael Jackson, including AEG. Let's listen to these back-to-back. First Jermaine, then Latoya.
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JERMAINE JACKSON, BROTHER OF MICHAEL JACKSON: They were only concerned about the show, moving the show forward.
MORGAN: These are people working for AEG?
J. JACKSON: These are people working for AEG, working for him, working for the show.
LATOYA JACKSON, MICHAEL JACKSON'S SISTER: They controlled everything that he did, the people that were around him. They knew he wasn't healthy enough to do those shows, but yet they said he was fine.
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MORGAN: Now, when you hear the family talk like that, not entirely surprising, but certainly a familiar pattern. From Michael's father to his mother to the siblings, all repeating this same pattern about how they believed all these people were around Michael, forcing him against his health, really, to do this tour. How significant will any of that be when this trial starts?
MESEREAU: Could be very significant. Apparently, there are e-mails from his choreographer, Ken Ortega, warning AEG that he's not well. He has serious physical problems, serious psychological and emotional problems, he's asking for professional help. And I'm informed that there are some e-mails from AEG basically telling Murray you better get him to rehearsals.
So I think this issue is well founded by the siblings, and I think it's going to be a big issue for the plaintiffs. And I think AEG will have a tough time explaining it.
MORGAN: AEG's lawyer, Marvin Putnam, said it was the 2005 child molestation trial which you obviously were involved in, which caused Michael to dramatically increase his drug use. Do you think there's any truth in that?
MESEREAU: I really don't. Now, I was his lead criminal defense counsel in that trial. I talked to him throughout the trial. He was lucid, he was articulate, he was cooperative. I never had a problem working with Michael. My co-counsel, Susan (INAUDIBLE) and I both thought he was one of the nicest clients we ever represented. And I did not see drug use as a problem during the trial.
Now, the verdict day, he didn't look well, I will say that. He had been through over five months of trial, all the stress and strain, we were in court five days a week. And I do think that he suffered physically and emotionally during the trial. But I never saw him take a prescription drug. It would not have been unusual if he had, because people in situations like that are sleep-deprived, they are depressed, they have anxiety. If he did take something, it would not have surprised me, and it would not have been abnormal.
But he never was a problem for us when it came to talking to him, getting information from him, telling him what was going on. He was a delightful client to represent.
MORGAN: One of the e-mails you alluded to is from AEG Live CEO or co- CEO Paul Gongaware, which says, "We want to remind Murray it is AEG, not MJ, who is paying his salary. We want to remind him what is expected of him." Quite explicit really there, you would think, in terms of who's responsible.
I suppose on the flipside, Michael Jackson was a very well known, highly temperamental pop superstar prone to canceling concerts, having a variety of health issues of various types of severity, unpredictable. All those things, like many pop artists. Could that work against the family's claim in the sense AEG may say look, we did try to get him to work but he was a bit flaky?
MESEREAU: Well, if they thought he was that flaky and they thought he was that disturbed, why did they enter into a contract with him to do all these concerts? They invested over $30 million before the concerts even began. If they thought he was that bad and they thought his reputation was suffering from all these other issues, why in the world did they go into business with him? I think it's an uphill battle for AEG.
MORGAN: Let's just play the final clip from the Anderson interview. Quite extraordinary moment when Conrad Murray burst into song.
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MURRAY: You know what surprises me, Anderson? Let me sing something for you. This is important to me. (SINGING) He's a little boy that Santa Claus forgot. And goodness knows he did not want a lot. He wrote a note to Santa for some crayons and a toy. It broke his little heart when he found Santa hadn't come. In the streets, he envied all those lucky boys. But goodness knows he didn't want a lot. I'm so sorry for that laddie who hasn't got a daddy -
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MORGAN: I mean, it's almost comical on one level, that. You can quite see why he didn't testify, because clearly, I suspect his legal team weren't entirely sure how he would behave on the stand. But when you hear Conrad Murray behave like that, that's not the behavior of, as he would pitch himself to us, being a decent, honorable, straightforward physician, is it?
MESEREAU: No. He has never taken responsibility for what he did. He has always blamed Michael Jackson for everything that's happened to him. He wasn't professional. He violated medical ethics. When the paramedics came to the scene, they asked him what did you give him? He never mentioned Propofol. There was evidence that he tried to hide Propofol from the paramedics and the police. He can't get out of this. He's responsible for his death. AEG should not have retained him. They should have checked him out beforehand, and if they had any problem with him, they should have gotten rid of him. No, he's not a good doctor. He shouldn't be a doctor and I think he's where he belongs.
MORGAN: Final question and very quickly, if you don't mind. Is she going to win, Katherine Jackson on behalf of the family?
MESEREAU: She and the children are going to win, in my opinion. They have a very strong case. They have a great lawyer, Brian Pannish, the best in Los Angeles, for a case like this. And I think they have the evidence on their side. And I think they have morality on their side. So, I think the defendants have a tough go.
MORGAN: Tom, great to see you, as always. Please come back soon.
MESEREAU: Thank you very much, Piers.
MORGAN: Tom Mesereau. Can't think of a better guy to talk to about Michael Jackson.
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