Jackson zoomed to the top of the Forbes Magazine list of highest earning dead celebrities and his executors are moving quickly on more projects designed to burnish the performer’s image and expand the inheritance of his three children.
A Cirque du Soleil extravaganza, “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour’’ opens in Las Vegas this weekend, a precursor to a permanent installation at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, and fans are expected to flock there for a “Fan Fest’’ exhibit of Jackson memorabilia.
After the trial, a judge made it clear that the defense effort to cast Jackson as the villain in the case had been a miserable failure. Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, called a reckless opportunist and sentenced to the maximum four years in prison.
Judge Michael Pastor also blasted Murray for experimenting on the pop star with the operating-room anesthetic propofol to help him battle debilitating insomnia, even though the drug was never meant to be used in a private home.
Some experts say the revelations made the King of Pop look more like a regular person coping with a difficult challenge.
“In the final analysis, not a lot of damage was done,’’ Jackson biographer J. Randy Taraborelli said. “I think the trial humanized Michael Jackson. It presented him as a human being with problems.’’
As evidence unfolded, “It definitely made our hearts go out to Michael Jackson. He was a person suffering a great deal and not getting the help he needed,’’ the author said.
Taraborelli said the entertainer’s family, fans and estate executors were concerned before the trial that testimony would paint Jackson as responsible for his own death while resurrecting past accusations of child molestation and bizarre behavior by the King of Pop.
But the judge limited testimony and evidence to Jackson’s final months and specifically ruled out any mention of the 2005 molestation trial.
