Jackson’s doctor Murray released after two years in jail

LOS ANGELES – Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s death, was released from jail on Monday after serving two years of a four- year term.

Murray, 60, was released from the Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles at 12:01 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff ‘s Department said.

A spokesman for the sheriff’s office said Murray was released to “representatives,” without giving details about his exit, local Los Angeles Times reported.

Murray, whose incarcenation time was cut short as a result of good behavior in jail, evaded a waiting crowd of photographers and die-hard Jackson fans, the report said.

“I am happy he’s finally out,” his lawyer, Valerie Wass, was quoted as speaking outside the jail early Monday.

“They didn’t release him one minute early,” said the lawyer who is expected to represent Murray in an appeal against his conviction, filed in April this year.

She said she believed that Murray, who was a registered doctor in California, Nevada and Texas before Jackson’s death, would one day practice medicine again.

Murray was sentenced to the maximum four-year term for his role in Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009. The pop star died at the age of 50 from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol at his rented mansion west of Los Angeles while he was preparing his never- realized “This Is It” concert series in London.

The coroner’s office determined that Jackson died of mortal propofol intoxication. Murray, however, denied wrong doing in his treatment of the singer.

During the trial, he said it was Jackson himself that likely administered the fatal dose when the doctor was out of his room. But the prosecutors insisted that propofol should only be used in a hospital setting under proper monitoring facility.