ER Doctor Testifies in Conrad Murray Trial

Los Angeles - Michael Jackson was clinically dead by the time he was brought to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in June 2009, and despite more than an hour of resuscitation efforts, he never showed any signs of life, an emergency room doctor testified today.

Testifying in the involuntary-manslaughter trial of Jackson's personal physician, Conrad Murray, Dr. Richelle Cooper said she had authorized paramedics in the field to pronounce the singer dead at 12:57 p.m. when he was still at his rented Holmby Hills home on June 25, 2009.

"I made a call based on the radio information I had (from paramedics)," she said. "... I felt comfortable pronouncing him (dead)."

Jackson, however, was taken to the hospital at the insistence of Murray, according to earlier testimony from paramedics. Cooper said when Jackson arrived at the hospital at 1:13 p.m., he had no pulse and she believed that any resuscitation efforts would be futile.

"At the time Mr. Jackson was my patient, he had already been dead for some time," Cooper testified.

In spite of that, she said hospital personnel tried for an hour and 13 minutes to revive the pop superstar, to no avail. She said a pulse was never detected in the singer. Cooper noted that it was the first time a patient she had determined to be dead in the field was actually brought in to the hospital to be treated.

Jackson was pronounced dead that day at 2:26 p.m.

Cooper testified last week that Murray never told her he had administered the powerful sedative propofol to Jackson, saying only that he had given the singer Lorazepam.

Defense attorney J. Michael Flanagan asked Cooper today if it would have changed her treatment of Jackson if Murray had told her he had given the singer 25 milligrams of propofol. She said it would not have, nor would it have changed the ultimate outcome of treatment.

"Mr. Jackson died long before he became a patient I was personally responsible for," she said.

Cooper said she could not assess Murray's demeanor at the hospital because she was more focused on Jackson. But she said that after Jackson had been pronounced dead, she went to see the singer's three children.

"I did go to check on the children ... they were crying," she said. "They were fairly hysterical, being comforted by someone referred to as their nurse."