Neo, в статье http://www.law.com/jsp/tx/PubArticleTX. … bxlogin=1# , что я указала в посте про Миранду внизу, написано, что Чернофф прилетел вечером 26 июня из Хьюстона в Калифорнию, поэтому получается, что не мог он до этого быть с Мюрреем при первой встрече с полицией. Мюррей позвонил Черноффу к середине дня 26 июня.
На всякий случай скопирую статью сюда (хоть и июльская), мне она кажется интересной и источник хороший, есть поподробней о встрече с полицией 27.06, пишут тоже, что это была вторая встреча. Насчет первой - в больнице вскоре после смерти полиция общалась с Мюрреем. У врача не было представителя адвоката в то время, говорит Чернофф.
Так что... Чернофф, видимо, так выразился на своем сайте про вторую встречу.
Статья :
Best Course of Treatment: Representing Michael Jackson's Personal M.D.
By Miriam Rozen
Texas Lawyer
July 20, 2009
What does a criminal-defense lawyer do when the whole world points a finger at his client?
If you're Houston lawyer Ed Chernoff and your client was the King of Pop's personal physician, you enlist the help of your partners in an effort to redirect the 24/7 news cycle and show how your client cooperated with police — then you hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Chernoff, a partner in Houston's Stradley, Chernoff & Alford, represents Dr. Conrad Murray, who on June 25 found Michael Jackson in bed not breathing but with a pulse. Murray tried to resuscitate Jackson, 50, and then rode with him in the ambulance to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center where the singer died that day.
With Jackson's death came nearly instantaneous reports in the media that the megastar may have been abusing prescription medications. And with that news, Murray was thrust into the spotlight.
"Every decision we have made we have had in mind that [Los Angeles prosecutors] could charge Dr. Murray, irrespective of his guilt," Chernoff says, adding that his client did nothing wrong.
At the hospital on June 25, shortly after Jackson died, Los Angeles Police Department officials questioned Murray — who is licensed to practice medicine in Texas, Nevada and California. That same day, the LAPD impounded Murray's car so authorities could search for evidence. The doctor was not represented by a lawyer at the time, Chernoff says.
But by the mid-afternoon on June 26, Murray, who has offices in Houston and Las Vegas, had called Chernoff. Another Houston lawyer, who Chernoff declines to identify, recommended his firm to Murray. When Murray called, Chernoff says he was 50 percent sure it was a hoax so he insisted Murray wire money for at least a portion of his $1,200 last-minute plane ticket to California before he agreed to fly out there.
Chernoff says Murray recognized he needed a lawyer because "all hell broke" after Jackson's death. Murray hired "legal counsel to help guide him through the police investigation process" and "to make sure the police investigation is conducted properly," Chernoff says.
The evening of June 26, Chernoff says he flew from Houston to California to meet with Murray at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, a location the two men picked to avoid the paparazzi. Murray relied upon his partners William Stradley and Matt Alford — all three are former assistant district attorneys in Harris County who have been in private practice together since 1999 — to handle matters in Houston. Alford says before Chernoff left for California he called Alford to say Murray had hired the firm and Chernoff needed help and their expertise on police procedures. Alford says he promised Chernoff that he would "hold down the fort in Houston," while Chernoff flew West to meet their new client. [See "Houston Lawyer Representing Doctor With Michael Jackson When He Died," Texas Lawyer, Tex Parte Blog, June 29, 2009.]
At the Ritz-Carlton, Murray and Chernoff created an office in a private room at the hotel restaurant. On June 26 and June 27, Chernoff says, he began negotiating with the LAPD regarding the police's scheduled second interview of Murray. Chernoff says he asked the LAPD officers to meet Murray and himself at the hotel to avoid unwanted press attention. And Chernoff says he asked the police to control leaks. "The agreement with them right from the get-go was no leaks," recalls Chernoff, "with the understanding that you can't protect completely from leaks in the long term."
"At that initial point of time . . . you hope you can keep things pretty clean. First, you want to know where the police's initial investigation is headed. You certainly don't want the investigation to be politicized. We knew everyone is looking for someone to blame. So you identify where the investigation is heading and how that is going to fit into what your client is going to tell them."
On June 27, the LAPD issued a press release regarding Murray stating: "On June 27, 2009, Dr. Conrad Murray, the physician who was with Michael Jackson at the time of his collapse, voluntarily contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. Detectives assigned to Robbery-Homicide Division met with Dr. Murray and conducted an extensive interview. Dr. Murray was cooperative and provided information which will aid the investigation." Tenesha Dobine, a spokeswoman for the LAPD, says the department has not issued any more statements regarding Murray.
The weekend after Jackson's death, Chernoff didn't sleep much. On June 27, Chernoff says, he was too busy with Murray and the police to pay attention to the dozens of emergency text messages he received from his partners in Houston.
By mid-morning June 27, Alford recalls, the rollercoaster started. The Houston Chronicle posted a story identifying Chernoff and his partners as Murray's counsel, Alford says, and within a half an hour, "the top blew off things." His BlackBerry, where calls to the firm's office were forwarded, began ringing every 30 seconds with calls from reporters, Alford says. Local television news trucks parked outside Alford's house. Network news representatives began calling to request interviews with Murray.
Alford needed help. So he called Stradley, who was looking forward to a week of vacation having just finished preparing for trial on another case. Stradley recalls his wife, who picked up the phone, told him that Alford wanted him to put on a suit and go over to his house. Puzzled and not yet up to speed on Murray's situation, Stradley went to Alford's house and they began splitting up the task of returning the press calls. Having talked only briefly to Chernoff, Alford and Stradley attempted to correct what they say was misinformation about Murray that was dominating the 24/7 news cycle. They stressed to reporters that Murray intended to cooperate with the police and that he was not stonewalling. Indeed, they told reporters that Murray was about to meet with the LAPD for a second time, recalls Stradley.
Alford sought additional reinforcements. He called Tammy Kidd, a former Harris County prosecutor who now works with Miranda Sevcik, the founder of Houston-based media consulting firm Media Masters. Alford says he asked Kidd and Sevcik to help them manage the press. By the early afternoon on June 27, Alford, Stradley, Kidd and Sevcik all were busy fielding press calls.
Sometime that Saturday, Alford says, the firm's Web site suffered a blowout from too many hits. He had Sevcik and Kidd work to fix the problem and establish a blog devoted to Chernoff's press statements regarding Murray. Since then, Chernoff has used the blog to provide reporters with updated information about Murray.
During those first days with his client in California, Chernoff knew publicity would factor into his representation of Murray, but he "wasn't fully aware of how crazy it was going to get," he says.
Chernoff and Murray met with the LAPD at the Ritz-Carlton the evening of June 27; Chernoff declines to say what his client told the police. After the three-hour meeting, Chernoff says he spoke with his partners in Houston. "When I finally got hold of them, then I realized the magnitude of the interest and was able to start looking at some of the preliminary press reports," he recalls.
Initially, Chernoff says, he told Alford to stop returning reporters' phone calls. But Chernoff says Alford told him, "You are not going to shut anything down. You don't know what the f**k is happening." Then Sevcik got on the phone to tell Chernoff that a "Dateline NBC" news producer wanted him to appear on the television show. Chernoff taped the show in Los Angeles on Sunday June 28. During the broadcast, Chernoff says he was able to deliver his main messages about his client: Murray was cooperating with police; he did not prescribe Demerol or Oxycontin to Jackson; he had only treated Jackson for a short period of time; and other doctors had treated and prescribed medication for Jackson.
Chernoff didn't get to watch the Sunday "Dateline" broadcast since he was on a plane to Houston when it aired. When he got home, he slept for only a few hours, then he, his partners and the PR team met and decided they needed more TV appearances to get their message out about Murray. The morning of Monday June 29, Chernoff and Alford made their way to a Houston TV studio to appear on all of the network morning news programs, as well as on CNN and Fox News.
Chernoff believes the blitz that Monday helped his client. Sevcik says before the media interviews, she looked at roughly 100 comments posted on 20 different Web sites and only about 25 percent of those comments said Murray was an innocent bystander in Jackson's death. After the Monday media appearances by Chernoff and Alford, that figure rose to 75 percent, Sevcik says.
Chernoff stresses that his client did nothing wrong and Chernoff wants to make sure the public knows that. The message is especially important in case Murray is charged with a crime, because it will improve Murray's chances of an unbiased jury pool and getting a fair trial. "It's different when you are working with an innocent client. If you have a guilty client, you shut up. But we still believe once toxicology is finally and fully done that our client is going to be proven to be innocent," Chernoff says.
The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office performed an autopsy on Jackson's body on June 26, but it has not yet determined the cause of death, and the toxicology report is not complete. "I don't think anyone knows when it's going to be released," says Stradley.
On June 30, Chernoff flew to Las Vegas to bring Murray a secure cell phone to prevent electronic eavesdropping as well as to collect certain documents. Chernoff says, given the death threats the doctor has received, Murray is reluctant about seeing patients. Murray now travels with a bodyguard and most of the time he stays at his Las Vegas home in a gated community.
Chernoff says he is in constant contact with the LAPD, and officers may want to interview Murray again. "We will be happy to meet with them. We just don't want to get into irrelevant discussions," Chernoff says. If prescription medications were responsible for Jackson's death, "we are completely in the dark about the drugs that were in [Jackson's] system. We're completely in the dark about what drugs would have killed him."
Chernoff states "unequivocally" on his blog that "there was no Demerol or Oxycontin administered or prescribed by Dr. Murray" to Jackson and that "Dr. Murray didn't prescribe anything that should have killed Michael Jackson. . . . There's nothing in his history, nothing that Dr. Murray knew, that would lead him to believe [Jackson] would go into sudden cardiac arrest or respiratory failure. There was no red flag available to Dr. Murray, which led him to believe [Jackson] would have died the way he did. It's still a mystery how he died."
Who Is Ed Chernoff?
After graduating from the University of Houston Law Center in 1987, Chernoff worked as a prosecutor until 1991 in the Harris County District Attorney's Office, which then was led by DA Johnny Holmes. On his job application, Chernoff wrote that his hobbies included "sleeping and eating."
At the DA's office, he earned a reputation as a talented trial lawyer with a sharp wit, according to supervisors' comments in his personnel file, which Chernoff provided to Texas Lawyer .
Since starting in private practice, Chernoff has handled some big cases, but he says he has never had a client who attracted as much media attention as Murray. In 2003, Chernoff defended Steven Puffer, who was acquitted by a jury after 15 minutes of deliberation for allegedly hacking into the Harris County district clerk's wireless computer system. That same year, Chernoff won an acquittal for Roland Angelle, who was alleged to have pulled a gun on legendary plaintiffs lawyer Walter Umphrey of Beaumont's Provost HUmphrey.
Mention Chernoff to other lawyers who've handled high-profile clients and cases and they note his affinity for body-building and tattoos, at least one of which was acquired during a three-month sabbatical from the DA's office during which Chernoff drove a motorcycle around the country. They also say he and his partners are excellent lawyers.
"I think Ed, Matt and Bill have done a superb job and done an excellent job of making clear their client was cooperating with police," says Chip B. Lewis, a Houston criminal-defense solo who represented Kenneth Lay, former chairman and chief executive officer of Houston's Enron Corp., who in 2006 was found guilty of conspiracy, fraud and making false statements. Lewis also represented Robert Durst, the heir to a real-estate empire who in 2003 was acquitted of murder for allegedly killing his 71-year-old Galveston neighbor.
Rusty Hardin of Houston's Rusty Hardin & Associates, who has represented Arthur Andersen LLP and baseball player Roger Clemens, supervised Chernoff when they both worked in the DA's office. Hardin says Chernoff is an excellent attorney with a great sense of humor. He warns, however, that Chernoff will have to be careful about what he says regarding the Jackson case because of the media attention. Hardin says Chernoff has done well in the couple of interviews Hardin has seen on TV. But Hardin says he has discovered through experience that with some high-profile clients, specifically with Clemens, it's better to stop returning reporters' phone calls.
Johnny Sutton, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas who recently launched the Austin office of Ashcroft Sutton Ratcliffe, also worked with Chernoff when they were assistant DAs in Harris County. Sutton says Chernoff "has a great sense of humor. He is wickedly smart. He beats to a different drummer but that makes him much more powerful in the courtroom."
But Dan Cogdell of Houston's Cogdell Law Firm, who represents Laura Pendergest-Holt, the former chief investment officer at Stanford Financial Group who was the first executive charged in the government's investigation of R. Allen Stanford's financial companies, says he has concerns about how much talking Chernoff and his partners have done with the press. "It's admirable if it's accurate, but it's devastating if it isn't," he says about the details Chernoff has provided about Murray's activities before and after Jackson's death. If Chernoff and his partners are relying on Murray's account of events exclusively, they may have problems, Cogdell predicts. At this early stage of an investigation, Cogdell says, clients are not always reliable about getting all the facts right. "The older I get the more I take the position that I have never won a case in the press, although I have lost a few," Cogdell says.
Similarly, David Botsford advises that Chernoff and his partners be cautious when dealing with the press. Botsford is a partner in Austin's Botsford & Roark who represented two U.S. Border Patrol agents in their appeals of convictions for shooting an illegal immigrant. Earlier this year, then-President George W. Bush commuted the former agents' sentences. "You always have to put the clients' interest as paramount," Botsford says. "Lawyers can get into a conflict of wanting to generate press, which helps the lawyer, but can also hurt your client. You have to constantly remind yourself of that. The major rule is if in doubt, don't talk."
Chernoff says Murray's freedom is his priority. "If this case is charged, I worry greatly about Dr. Murray because it's going to be a long trial, incredibly expensive, expert costs are going to eat it up. Real justice is only obtained if you have the money to really do what is necessary. My big concern is that Dr. Murray or any private citizen wouldn't have the money." Chernoff says Murray "doesn't have a pot to piss in," and Chernoff doesn't even know if he will get paid for his legal services.
For the three lawyers at Stradley, Chernoff & Alford, their new client has been all-consuming. Notes Chernoff, "It has taken up a lot of our time and a lot of energy and thought process, but my clients have been great. And the lawyers in Houston have been great. That is one of the great things about lawyers in Texas. People are extremely pleased that there are Texas lawyers involved in this case."
Отредактировано Ines (23-03-2010 00:22:37)
(даже озвучила ее в ветке Майкл и художники), но мне кажется, что мы загоняемся 
именно это время фигурирует везде 
, - заявил он.
)
Господи, когда же это закончится!?
