THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL has pulled a TV show featuring a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s autopsy.

The show, which was due to be shown on 13 January to Discovery channel subscribers in the the UK and Europe, was scrapped just days ahead of the opening evidence in the criminal trial of Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray.

The executors of Jackson’s estate had objected to the planned documentary, reportedly accusing the network of operating in “shockingly bad taste … motivated solely by your blind desire to exploit Michael’s death, while cynically attempting to dupe the public into believing this show will have serious medical value.”

Preliminary evidence in the trial against Dr Conrad Murray is due to be heard in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

According to TMZ.com, the defence team is likely to claim that Jackson killed himself, possibly inadvertently.

Lawyers for Murray will make the case that Jackson was frequently “dehydrated, medicated, and sleep-deprived” when he went on tour, and needed medication to help him sleep.

Sources close to Murray’s defence team are quoted as claiming that:

The gruelling concert schedules reduced MJ to a physical mess, prone to relying on and demanding drugs to sleep…The defence believes when Murray walked out of the room and Jackson woke up, he accidentally infused himself with a fatal dose of the drug out of frustration and fear.