Conrad Murray, 58, is charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of Jackson, 50, and could face four years in prison and lose his medical licence if found guilty.
Murray has said little in public, except that he did not cause Jackson's death in June 2009.
"Your honour, I am an innocent man," Murray said quietly at his arraignment last January. "I definitely plead not guilty."
Prosecutors will portray him as a greedy, incompetent doctor with a messy personal life who signed on as Jackson's personal physician for 150,000 dollars a month to save himself from financial ruin.
The defence says he was Jackson's friend, a capable protector of the singer's health, prepared to travel with him to Europe on his tour, and is still mourning the death.
One of Murray's greatest assets may be what prosecutors say he wasn't good at: being a doctor.
"Jurors generally believe doctors," said lawyer Harland Braun, who has defended many medics in court. "They have had to trust doctors over a lifetime. What the defence has to do is wrap him in the general feeling that doctors are good people. They care about their patients and he was not indifferent to Michael's welfare."
When the trial starts, Jacksons' family will sit in a row in the Los Angeles court. They had wanted Murray charged with murder.
Edward Chernoff, the lead defence lawyer, said Murray feels the pressure.
"He feels like David in the David and Goliath story but he doesn't have a slingshot because of the rulings that took his slingshot away," said Mr Chernoff, reacting last month to decisions barring chunks of evidence the defence wanted to present about Jackson's history of drug use.
Superior Court judge Michael Pastor, who is presiding over the trial, has since instructed lawyers to refrain from commenting on his rulings.
Following opening statements by both sides, the first prosecution witness, choreographer and director Kenny Ortega, will take jurors into Jackson's life during the crucial weeks he was rehearsing for his landmark This Is It concert. Video clips from the posthumous London rehearsal film could be included in his evidence.
Nobody is saying whether Murray will give evidence in his own defence. Although considered a dangerous strategy, it might be the only way for him to show jurors his personality.
Murray told his story in a three-hour interview with police two days after Jackson's death, but the transcript remains sealed. Early on, he posted a short video on YouTube saying: "I have done all I can do. I told the truth, and I have faith the truth will prevail."
The truth, in one way or another, involves the drug propofol, which caused Jackson's death. Prosecutors say Murray was grossly negligent in administering the hospital drug in a private home. Defence lawyers will try to prove that Jackson caused his own death by drinking a dose when Murray was out of the room.
The defence team also will be fighting what jurors may have heard about Murray's complicated love life and his distressed financial affairs.
Born in St Andrews, Grenada, he lived with his poor farmer grandparents, going to school barefoot because they could not afford shoes for him. At the age of seven, he moved to Trinidad and Tobago to live with his mother and stepfather. He never met his father, a physician, until he moved to the US in search of higher education in 1978.
After getting his medical degree from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, he trained at various hospitals and then pursued a speciality in interventional cardiology. In 1999, Murray moved to Las Vegas, opened a storefront medical practice and another in Houston where his father practised. He also had a licence in California, which is now suspended.
Murray, then in a 780,000-dollar financial hole with unpaid debts and bill collection lawsuits, met Jackson when the singer took one of his children to see him for treatment in 2008 and Murray quickly became his doctor and friend.
