Prosecutors on Monday charged Michael Jackson’s personal physician with involuntary manslaughter in connection with administering a combination of surgical anesthetic and sedatives blamed in the music legend’s death last summer.

The complaint filed in Superior Court accused Dr. Conrad Murray, a cardiologist caring for the 50-year-old pop icon during an ambitious comeback attempt, of causing Jackson's June 25 death by acting “without due caution and circumspection.” 

The criminal case comes after a seven-month investigation that stretched from the master bedroom of Jackson’s Holmby Hills mansion to the heart clinic Murray ran in a poor neighborhood of Houston. The focus, however, rarely left Murray.

Within weeks of Jackson’s death, detectives described the doctor as a manslaughter suspect in court papers that said he admitted leaving the singer alone and under the influence of propofol – a powerful anesthetic used to render surgical patients unconscious – in a bedroom of the sprawling home. 

The coroner’s office ruled Jackson’s death a homicide and said the cause was “acute propofol intoxication” in conjunction with the effect of other sedatives Murray acknowledged providing.

Despite the almost immediate focus on Murray – authorities first questioned him in the hospital where doctors were working in vain to revive Jackson – the multi-agency probe that included federal and local investigators progressed slowly, and the doctor was not formally accused of wrongdoing until the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office filed its complaint.

Involuntary manslaughter is the least serious homicide charge available to prosecutors, its maximum punishment of four years in prison far less than the life sentence for murder or....

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