Posted on 10/23/2003 8:22:40 PM PDT by Gelato
Posted on Thu, Oct. 23, 2003
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - (KRT) - Michael Schiavo is in hiding, concerned over threats to his life, his attorney said Thursday. Yet the attorney for the parents of Schiavo's wife, Terri, the brain-damaged woman at the center of a contentious end-of-life case, says Michael Schiavo was seen shopping at an upscale Tampa mall in recent days.
As an advocacy agency continued its state investigation of Terri Schiavo's case Thursday and her parents resumed their vigil outside the hospice near St. Petersburg where she was receiving nutrition through a feeding tube, questions multiplied about Michael Schiavo's role and motivations.
Terri Schiavo "looks great," her father, Bob Schindler, said Thursday, even as legal scholars and medical ethicists criticized Gov. Jeb Bush's intervention this week to reinsert her feeding tube and predicted that a new law signed by Bush allowing that action would be struck down in the courts.
The growing national fascination with a case wrapped in a quality-of-life drama that many families know all too well increased the pressure on Michael Schiavo to tell his story. He issued a three-page statement through his attorneys to explain his position earlier this week. The statement tries to humanize a man who has been portrayed in testimony and affidavits as a tall, menacing bully who grew weary of his wife's continued presence in a persistent vegetative state as he built a life and a new family with a longtime girlfriend.
"I never wanted Terri to die," Michael Schiavo wrote. "I still don't. After … years of desperately searching for a cure for Terri, the death of my own mother helped me realize that I was fooling myself."
Even his attorneys acknowledged the need for Schiavo to surface publicly.
"It's been very difficult for him to understand and accept that he has got to publicize his situation," attorney Deborah Bushnell said. "He doesn't want this to be public; he wants it to be private."
Yet with more public attention focused on the case than in the preceding 10 years, Michael Schiavo - as his wife's legal guardian - publicly banned his wife's family from visiting her Wednesday at a Clearwater hospital and initially refused to disclose where he planned to transport her. She later was returned to Woodside Hospice, where she has lived since April 2000 and where Michael Schiavo's other attorney, George Felos, is a former board chairman. On Thursday, Michael Schiavo once again allowed the Schindler family to visit Terri.
Though her family has no access to Terri's medical records, Pat Anderson, attorney for her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, speculated that she was too weak for the move. "She needs to be in an intensive-care unit," Anderson said.
Thus, for the second time this week, Felos was left to explain to reporters Thursday the reasons his client continues to seek the removal of his wife's feeding tube.
Felos used this analogy as a window into his client's motivation: A couple is sitting around watching TV and sees a program about a horrible illness or an accident. They turn to each other and ask that they each not be kept alive artificially.
"That's basically what happened between Terri and Michael, and he's just determined to keep his promise," Felos said. "I think he's unable to live the rest of his life if he walked away knowing he let Terri down and was unable to keep his promise to her."
Bob Schindler Jr., 38, Terri Schiavo's brother and a teacher at a Tampa Catholic school, said his family believes the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities will turn up evidence of abuse and neglect in its investigation of Michael Schiavo's guardianship.
Michael Schiavo has strongly denied those allegations.
But Schindler charges an effort to cover up "attempted murder" is the reason behind Michael Schiavo's determination to let Terri die and cremate her body since there no longer is any money for Michael Schiavo to inherit from his wife's medical fund, which was depleted largely by Michael Schiavo's legal costs.
"The money has now deteriorated," Schindler said outside the hospice on Thursday. "That's why Michael is trying to kill her. If she wakes up and gets rehabilitated, she can tell us what happened that night (in 1990) - that's one theory why he wants her dead and cremated. Why does he want her cremated? If you start connecting the dots, it paints an ugly picture."
Michael Schiavo's attorneys say the Schindler family's accusations are fabrications born of desperation as their legal fight has foundered over the years.
Schindler said a bone scan taken a year after his sister's mysterious collapse 13 years ago recently surfaced; it shows a history of trauma, including broken bones. Schindler lived in the same St. Petersburg apartment complex as his sister and brother-in-law in 1990. He says Michael Schiavo knew CPR but did not perform it the night Terri collapsed and was deprived of oxygen for 10 minutes. Schindler said his family and their doctors suspect Terri Schiavo was beaten and suffered brain damage.
Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, says the bone scan only shows the normal changes of a sedentary person in a nursing home.
Felos vowed again Thursday to challenge the governor's new law all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.
Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the world's leading bioethicists who spoke this week at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago, says he thinks the law will tumble.
"I think the action by the governor and the state legislature is immoral and unconstitutional," he said. "When did the Florida Legislature decide it couldn't trust its courts? The principle here is: Let a spouse make the decisions for their loved ones because they know them best."
Caplan pointed out that courts have consistently ruled in favor of Michael Schiavo even though his wife's parents and siblings have alleged he abused her.
"Look at the evidence," he said. "They keep coming back and saying, no, he's not in it for life insurance; he's not in it because he doesn't care for her. It's just that (the biological family members) want to be the decision-maker."
Caplan said the case also has implications for couples without a marriage license.
"If you're not married, if you're gay, or a common-law wife or husband who've been together for a long time, if this law holds up, then your mom is going to make the decisions, not your partner. You have no legal rights. They're out the window."
As to Terri Schiavo's legal rights, they remain in the hands of her guardian, Michael Schiavo.
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(Martinez reported from Florida; Kampert reported from Chicago; Chicago Tribune correspondent Peter Gorner contributed to this report.)
"If you're not married, if you're gay, or a common-law wife or husband who've been together for a long time, if this law holds up, then your mom is going to make the decisions, not your partner. You have no legal rights. They're out the window."
As I understand it, without a living will, you have no say in the matter if you can't speak anymore. It is left to your loved ones and the state, and that includes parents, relatives and children as well as any interested parties. The law is clear, you need demonstrable proof you really decided to die, and absent your own testimony, you need a notarized document such as living will. How simple can you get?
No one wants to live in a vegetative state on tubes forever, but no one really knows if they will. But the mere fact that I might have some day said I wished someone would die is not the legal equivalent of killing them, including myself.
And when did he promise to deny her last rights in her faith, and when did he promise to deny her family the ability to see her? More importantly, what did she say when he promised her these things?
About the only option he'd have to escape from that would be to change his name and leave the country.
I can see now that the term schiavomarjory was a keyword somehow connected with the results webpage I got when I did that first search for schiavo.
It might have been placed in the html coding by default, to bring me back to the results webpage.
I know I had not entered the name "marjory' into any search box until I came across it...but maybe the website did that, automatically, in order to bring me back to the search page which listed Marjory Schiavo's company at the top.
I'll add that much of what I've seen crossed a line from heated rhetoric and innuendo (embarrassingly lacking in legitimate factual knowledge) to specific allegations of wrongdoing, and also crossed a line when these allegations were used as a focal point at this site to foment pressure against the legislators and the governor of the Plaintiff's home state to take action deleterious to the rights of Michael Schiavo.
We won't even go into the threats of physical harm that I've seen on here.
I've noticed several possible links between this case and Scientology. For one thing Scientology's world headquarters are in Clearwater, and a good percentage of the city's population are members of the cult. Also, the fact that a pottasium imbalance was noted in Terri's condition raises some red flags. Many Scientology practices involve pottassium.
Also, one of the law firms which has represented the cult in the past has a Schiavo as one of the partners.
I hope you're not insinuating that Felos or Schiavo would take time off, from their efforts to starve Terri, in order to sue people.
They are doing a determined job of sticking to their main task.
They haven't even taken a breather to sue the legislators or the Schindlers or the nurses that are speaking out against Mike.
Now that's dedication.
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