March 24, 2005
Legal Options Almost Gone for Schiavo
by Pete Winn, associate editor
The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to act on disabled Florida woman's case; intervention of Gov. Bush also seems unlikely.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal from Terri Schiavo's parents today, declining to intervene to keep the disabled woman alive.
The move leaves few legal options left in the battle to stop the court-imposed medical execution of Schiavo, who has been without food or water since her feeding tube was removed last Friday.
The high court's rejection — made without comment — came after Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy polled the other eight members of the court.
Later in the day, another avenue of hope for Schiavo's parents -- Bob and Mary Schindler -- ended in familiar fashion: at the Pinellas County court bench of Judge George W. Greer, who has ordered Terri's feeding tube removed three times in the last several years. He denied a request by the Florida Department of Children and Families to take custody of Schiavo pending an investigation of whether she may have been misdiagnosed and abused.
Ken Connor, attorney for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the Schindlers' request was a reasonable one.
"They were asking the court to take into account Dr. William Cheshire's assessment that Terri appears to have been misdiagnosed, and is not actually in a persistent vegetative state, but is in a minimally conscious state," Connor said. "Judge Greer seems to be of a mind — 'Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up.'
"He thumbed his nose at the U.S. Congress when they asked him to delay the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration — even though they indicated that Terri was both the subject and object of their investigation.
Later this afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore will be asked to overrule Greer and issue a temporary restraining order as a prelude to a full hearing on Cheshire's assessment. It was Whittemore, a Clinton appointee, who on Tuesday refused to reopen Schiavo's case in the wake of a law passed by Congress giving the federal courts jurisdiction over the matter.
Schiavo's husband Michael, who argues his wife would not want to live in her current state, countered the Schindlers' appeal to the Supreme Court with one of his own, urging justices not to intervene because her case has been in the courts for several years.
Without food and water, Schiavo, now in her seventh day of starvation and dehydration, could die at any time.
"It's tragic that the Supreme Court's 'evolving standards of decency' haven't evolved enough to protect Terri Schiavo," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America. "You'd think that a Court that prohibits states from executing retarded, convicted murderers would prohibit the state-ordered death of an innocent woman when there's so little evidence of her wishes.
"You couldn't establish probable cause for a search warrant based on the stale and highly suspect hearsay statements in this case. How could any court find it clear and convincing evidence sufficient to order a woman's death by starvation? If this satisfies constitutional due process, God help us."
There is plenty of proof, LaRue added, that this seems to be a legal system bent on killing this woman.
"Even if we knew that's what Terri wanted," she said, "Florida law makes aiding and abetting a suicide a felony, and there's no black-robed exemption."
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