Los Angeles -- In life and death, Michael Jackson generated the type of headlines that, just like his songs, stick in people's minds.

Nowhere was that more evident than in a Los Angeles courthouse this week when a judge asked 370 citizens whether any of them were unaware of the case against a doctor charged in the pop superstar's death. Not a single hand was raised.

That didn't surprise the judge, who knew he'd have to go out of this world to find people who hadn't heard of Jackson and the manslaughter case against Dr. Conrad Murray.

"We didn't expect you'd been living under a rock for the past several years, or that you made a pit stop from Mars," Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor told a group Thursday. A day later, when Pastor asked whether anyone didn't know about the case they might serve on, there was tittering.

Potential jurors...