What were the official causes listed on Michael Jackson's death certificate?
Executive summary
Michael Jackson’s publicly released initial death certificate (July 2009) listed the cause as “deferred” while toxicology and neuropathology tests were completed [1] [2]. Months later the Los Angeles County coroner amended the certificate to record the manner of death as homicide and to list the fatal injury as “injection by another,” reflecting the coroner’s finding that drugs given by another person caused his death [3] [4].
1. What the first, public certificate said — “deferred” while tests continued
When Michael Jackson’s death certificate was first released in July 2009 it did not list a definitive medical cause of death: the cause was recorded as “deferred” pending results of the autopsy and toxicology testing, and officials said parts of the brain were being retained for neuropathology analysis [1] [2] [5].
2. The coroner’s later ruling: homicide and “injection by another”
After the coroner completed the investigation and toxicology, the death certificate was amended to reflect a homicide ruling; the amended certificate specifies the fatal injury as “injection by another,” language emphasizing that someone else’s administration of a substance led to Jackson’s death [3] [4] [6].
3. How that wording relates to medical findings reported elsewhere
Independent reporting and later summaries commonly state the medical cause as “acute propofol intoxication,” and note benzodiazepines were also present; prosecutors later argued that Dr. Conrad Murray’s administration and monitoring of drugs was criminally negligent [7] [8] [9]. The coroner’s “injection by another” formulation is an administrative/legal phrasing of the manner of death; available sources show the coroner linked death to drugs administered by another person rather than listing a specific drug on the amended certificate itself [3] [4].
4. Criminal proceedings and how they intersect with the certificate
Conrad Murray was tried and convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter based on his administration and handling of powerful sedatives; sentencing and trial coverage repeatedly referenced propofol and other sedatives found in Jackson’s system [7] [9]. The amended certificate’s homicide designation is consistent with the coroner’s determination that another person’s actions caused the death and helped underpin prosecutorial action [3] [7].
5. Conflicting public impressions and missing details in some documents
Early confusion arose because the initial public certificate deferred cause—leading to speculation and inconsistent reporting—and because the public copy and internal coroner documents differ in level of detail; some sources emphasize the later homicide amendment while others emphasize the medical finding of propofol intoxication [1] [2] [3]. Available sources do not provide the verbatim full text of every field on the final internal certificate in this dataset; they instead summarize the amended manner (“homicide”) and the listed fatal injury (“injection by another”) [3] [4].
6. How to read “homicide” and “injection by another” in context
“Homicide” on a death certificate is a manner-of-death determination (who or what caused the death) rather than a criminal conviction; the coroner determined the death was caused by substances administered by another person, hence the phrase “injection by another” [3] [4]. That administrative language does not itself identify a defendant — though prosecutors later pursued a manslaughter case against Dr. Conrad Murray, who was convicted in 2011 [7] [9].
7. Persistent uncertainties and sources’ agendas
Different outlets emphasize different elements: some focus on the medical/forensic cause (“acute propofol intoxication”), others on the legal/administrative label (homicide, injection by another), and early reports highlighted the blank/“deferred” cause while testing continued [7] [1] [3]. Readers should note that media summaries sometimes conflate the coroner’s administrative wording with the detailed toxicology conclusions; corroborating both the coroner’s amendment and the toxicology/autopsy summaries is necessary to capture the full picture [3] [10] [7].
If you want, I can pull the exact quoted lines from the reported amended certificate and from the autopsy/toxicology summaries available in these files so you can see the precise wording side-by-side [3] [10].