Michael Jackson Manslaughter Hearing Delayed

Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's personal physician at the time of his death, will not face the involuntary manslaughter charges related to Jackson's death until next year. The judge overseeing the trial pushed the preliminary hearing to January 4th, 2011 because some witnesses are unavailable, and because the investigation is still ongoing, Reuters reports. At the hearing, both sides will present their evidence, and the judge will decide whether to give Murray a full-scale trial. Jackson's death, by "acute propofol intoxication," was has already been ruled a homicide.

Look back at Michael Jackson's life in photos.

At a hearing attended yesterday by Michael's parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson, two-dozen Jackson fans billing themselves "Justice for MJ" stood outside the courthouse with banners demanding that Murray be charged with murder. Murray is accused of giving Jackson a combination of the powerful anesthetic propofol and other sedatives, which caused Jackson to go into fatal cardiac arrest. Murray and his lawyers will reportedly argue that Jackson self-administered the deadly propofol dose when Murray left the room. Yesterday, Murray's defense team asked for permission to retest three samples from syringes and an intravenous drip found at the scene of Jackson's death.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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