Posted on 10/18/2003 12:49:52 AM PDT by cpforlife.org
ANN ARBOR, MI - According to Richard Thompson, former prosecutor of Jack Kevorkian, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has the legal authority to act in the case of Terri Schiavo, but lacks the political will to do so. Responding to the Governor’s statements that he cannot intervene in the civil case, Thompson claimed Bush is confusing the public on what is being asked of him.
“Nobody is asking the Governor to intervene in the civil case. We are asking him to initiate an independent criminal investigation based on a list of facts that suggest criminal wrongdoing,” said Thompson. “We have outlined for the Governor some of these facts, and confirmed his Constitutional authority to act. The fact that he has chosen to confuse the public by referring to the civil case, completely ignoring the request that we presented, reveals a lack of moral courage and political will. We expect the Governor to do the right thing, and so far, he has refused to do so.”
“If Governor Bush does not act quickly, I expect Terri will be killed by an overdose of morphine. She is being starved and denied fluids, and the Governor needs to act now before it’s too late,” said Thompson.
Thompson, now president of the Thomas More Law Center, delivered two emergency letters to Bush Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, asking him to initiate a criminal investigation. The letters outlined the constitutional authority of the Governor to act in the case, including a factual basis for initiating a criminal investigation. Bush has maintained he has no authority to interfere in the civil case that led to the feeding tube being removed.
CLICK BELOW TO GO TO THE THOMAS MORE LAW CENTER WEB SITE
http://www.thomasmore.org/news.html?NewsID=129&PHPSESSID=1729537c6319d2ad5a63e076dc8aef3a
Absolutely. Saving life comes first.
If the court system was failing them so miserably, why didn't they try to have the legislature intervene and change the law?
I don't think they realized that the fix was in soon enough.
Actually, while I think this case does highlight some of the problems with the judicial system, it's very difficult to change any aspect of the system without breaking something else.
If judges are fair and impartial, there are good reasons to have related cases go before the same judge. It saves a lot of time on exposition, and it discourages people from trying to "hedge their bets" in a case by breaking it up into smaller sub-cases in the hopes that at least one will land with a favorable judge.
On the other hand, it is quite clear that in this particular case, the rule that requires all matters in this case to go before Judge Greer is causing very bad effects. However reasonable the rule may be 99% of the time, in this case its effects are very unreasonable.
The question, then, is what to do. What I would suggest, though I don't know how this would work in practice, would be to establish a legal standard by which bench-trial findings of fact could be challenged (allowing the same for jury trials would probably require a Constitutional amendment). To prevent the system from being flooded by appeals of every single case, there should be a high standard of proof required to overturn any finding of fact, e.g. proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the original court was just plain wrong.
Under current standards, it is basically forbidden for any court to say that any other court's interpretation of evidence is wrong. Even if new evidence emerges which shows the earlier finding was factually incorrect, the earlier finding may only be reversed if such reversal can be done without impugning the earlier one, i.e. it would allow the judge to maintain that the earlier decision was correct for the evidence that was given. Further, new evidence may only be offered if the evidence was unavailable at the time of the original trial.
To use a somewhat extreme example (one where, admittedly, courts might bend the rules a little) supposed John Q Public is accused of killing Jane Smith. At his trial, he maintains that Jane Smith is alive, and he has seen her, but she has evaded any efforts to bring her to trial.
If John Q. Public is convicted and appeals his conviction, and Jane Smith walks into the appeals courtroom, John Q. Public would have to prove not only that she is still alive, but also--given he'd known of her state at the original trial--that he had made every possible effort to locate her for the original trial. If the state can convince a judge that John Q. Public should have been able to produce Jane Smith but was unable to do so, all the appeals in the world would be useless. [In practice, as noted, I think the state would make an exception in this particular case, but there have been plenty of cases where the state has refused to acknowledge the existence of evidence which is 100% exculpatory because it did not deem such evidence to have been presented in timely fashion.]
The reason being that we are all aware of cases where the convicted are released from jail because overwhelming new evidence, or simply DNA evidence, has been found and thus proves their innocence.
Yes, but the rules of legal procedure require that the defendant show that he could not have presented the evidence at the time of the original trial. If the state can convince a judge that the defendant should have been able to produce the evidence, then the defendant is cooked. Unless he can produce new evidence to prove that the previous evidence was unavailable to him, and he can prove that this new evidence was unavailable to him at the time of that appeal. Etc.
In cases where the evidence is too obvious, courts will sometimes let these legal procedures slide. But otherwise not.
I've wondered that too. All their legal work has been done pro bono; I would expect her attourneys, even if well-intentioned, were significantly outclassed. Many of the appeals raised were basically frivolous, but I find it hard to blame attourneys who were desparate to try something--anything--rather than just give up.
In a lot of ways, the legal system is like baseball. If it's bottom of the 9th, score tied, bases loaded, 2 out, and the Umpire calls a pitch that bounces in front of the plate before a motionless batter "Strike 3", then the batter is out and the home team doesn't store. It doesn't matter whether or not the pitch meets any reasonable definition for a strike; if the umpire declares it a strike, it's a strike.
Before setting foot in his courtroom for the first time (when they and Michael were still on the same side), when they would have had a chance to request a different judge.
Once they had the first hearing with Judge Greer, the fix was in.
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