LOS ANGELES — Michael Jackson, among the most famous performers in pop music history, spent his final days in a sleep-deprived haze of medication and misery until finally succumbing to a fatal dose of potent drugs provided by the private physician he had hired to act as his personal pharmaceutical dispensary, a jury decided on Monday.

The physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter nearly two and a half years after Jackson’s shocking death at age 50. The verdict came after nearly 50 witnesses, 22 days of testimony and less than two days of deliberation by a jury of seven men and five women. The trial had focused primarily on whether Dr. Murray was guilty of abdicating his duty or of acting with reckless criminal negligence, directly causing his patient’s death.

Dr. Murray, 58, faces up to four years in prison and the loss of his medical license. He sat stoically as the verdict was read and did not react as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs. Judge Michael Pastor ruled that he should be held without bail until his sentencing, set for Nov. 29.

Jackson, who had become a star as a child in Gary, Ind., singing with his siblings in the Jackson 5, grew into one of the best-known performers in the world. Though increasingly eccentric in his later years, often living on a secluded California estate he called Neverland, Jackson always had a fervent core of fans and, despite scandals, his lavish lifestyle and persistent money woes, always seemed just a comeback away from a return to the top.