Florida Court Prohibits Terri's Parents From Joining "Terri's Law" Battle (ACLJ)

LifeNews.com ^ | November 4, 2003 | Steven Ertelt

[nickcarraway]

Pinellas Park, FL (LifeNews.com) -- A Florida state court on Tuesday disallowed Terri's parents from entering the legal battle over Terri's Law. They wanted to join attorneys for Governor Jeb Bush in defending the legislation that allowed Bush to ask doctors to reinsert the feeding tube that is allowing Terri to live.

Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri's parents, were represented in the request by attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice, a pro-life law firm.

"We're very disappointed with the court's ruling," said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. "It is clear that state law permits the parents to get directly involved in a case to defend a state law that is keeping their daughter alive. It is unfortunate that the court did not find that the parents have sufficient legal interest in defending the state's actions -- actions that provide the only barrier between Terri and death by starvation.

Sekulow indicated the Schindlers may appeal the decision.

"We are currently examining all legal options available -- including an appeal -- for our clients. We will do everything possible to ensure that the interests of Terri's parents are represented in this case," he said.

Sekulow said the ACLJ is considering several options including filing a motion with the court to reconsider its ruling denying the motion to intervene; filing an appeal with the Florida Second District Court of Appeal; or, representing the interests of Terri's parents with the filing of an amicus brief on the issue.

In court papers filed Monday, Michael's attorneys said the legal battle is between Michael and Governor Bush and that, while Terri's parents have an interest in her well-being, they should not be a party to the lawsuit.

Attorneys for Governor Jeb Bush are expected to file a response to Michael's "Terri's Law" lawsuit this week.

The American Civil Liberties Union is aiding Schiavo in the lawsuit against Terri's Law.

Pro-life attorney Tom Marzen, who monitors end-of-life issues, told LifeNews.com he agrees the Schindlers have a right to be involved.

"The Schindlers should be allowed to intervene since their interests are certainly affected by the outcome of the suit," Marzen explained.

Michael's lawsuit also seeks a removal of Terri's feeding tube for the third time. The Schindlers' petition asks the judge to allow them to be appointed Terri's guardian in place of Michael.

Related web sites:

Terri's family - http://www.terrisfight.org

[greccogirl]

What bad analogy? Prove me wrong.

[cyn]

thanks for ping! btw, I am told we should be of good cheer . . .

May angels seen and unseen continue to guard, protect, and strengthen Terri and us all.

[PeyersPatches]

Use some of that love to try to understand that
Terri, unlike "Maria", is lacking a cerebral cortex.

---

That was the big argument regarding Karen Ann Quinlan that won the right to kill her. An autopsy performed after they finished her off revealed she had an intact cerebral cortex after all.

[Ohioan from Florida]

Some judges are appointed, others are elected. Greer was elected.

[daylate-dollarshort]

In Florida Circuit Court Judges are elected. In the event of a vacancy resulting from death, resignation etc., they may be appointed for the remainder of the term but must run for re-election at the completion of that term.

Needless to say most vacancies are "politically planned" to take advantage of incumbancy and name recognition.

[daylate-dollarshort]

I guess web designers, like some un-named others here, are the determiners of medical fact.....

---

From Orlando Sentinel

Schiavo images touch emotions

By Maya Bell
Sentinel Staff Writer

October 27, 2003

A potent picture is hard to ignore, and in the case of Terri Schiavo, the power of her image -- propped up in bed, eyes open, seemingly smiling at her mother -- has been incalculable.

Her parents have fought in the courts for years to keep her alive and lost at every turn, but Bob and Mary Schindler won last week in the court of public opinion, thanks in part to TV and Internet news clips that spurred tens of thousands of people to demand action from Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature.

"I've seen the videos. I see the joy in her face," said Cheryl Thomas, who wrote Bush after viewing the snippets on TV news from her Montana home. "She's exuberant. Her whole face lights up. She is very much aware. The governor had to do something."

Bush and the Legislature agreed, passing an unprecedented -- and many legal experts say, unconstitutional -- law allowing the governor to override the court-ordered removal of the feeding tube that has kept the severely brain-damaged woman alive for 13 years. The tube was reinserted after a six-day hiatus.

Although the governor said he was acting out of personal conviction, he has said he felt "compelled to give voice" to the thousands of people who have communicated their concerns in the Schiavo case.

And, according to Pamela Hennessy, a Schindler family volunteer who first posted the video snippets on the family Web site, terrisfight.org, in December, the recordings energized many of those voices.

"That was a turning point," Hennessy said. "I was getting a ton of e-mails from people who were just horrified. They were led to believe here was a woman trapped in bed, hooked to a machine, clinically brain-dead. This is what they thought, but what they see is, yes, a very disabled woman but someone who is definitely aware."

Perception vs. reality

But many experts say the videos, made public after a court hearing last year, distort the reality of Terri Schiavo's condition.

They say most lay people, including her parents, have trouble reconciling the image of her tracking a balloon with her eyes or smiling at her mother's kiss with what doctors and judges say are the facts: She is unaware. She is not responding. She is unconscious. But, like most patients in a persistent vegetative state, she has wake and sleep cycles characterized by involuntary movements that seem to mimic emotions.

"What's gotten the Legislature to act is the coverage of her blinking and moving. They think maybe she's disabled or retarded," said Bill Allen, co-director of the Florida Bioethics Network. "I think people would take a different view if every time they saw her blinking, an expert neurologist would explain a picture of her brain scan. It would show her brain is mush."

Ron Cranford, one of five neurologists who examined Terri Schiavo and her brain scans for an October 2002 court hearing, said her cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that controls thought and awareness, is severely atrophied and has all but disintegrated. He said that process began when she collapsed from a potassium imbalance in 1990, enduring five critical minutes without oxygen, and has progressed over the years.

"There is hardly any cerebral cortex left," Cranford said. "It looks like a black hole."

Explaining the images

He and a number of medical experts also take great umbrage at news media outlets that continue to describe Terri Schiavo as comatose. Patients in comas may wake up again, but those in persistent vegetative states don't -- especially after 13 years.

Coupled with the misleading video images, they say, inaccuracy is further confusing the public.

Kelly McBride, a member of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute, a journalism-education center in St. Petersburg, agreed.

"Those videos can be taken out of context," she said. "By using them as B-roll, which is the film under the voice-over, or by simply presenting them without context, journalists are inaccurately using and explaining them, and that is swaying public opinion."

Ironically, the videos were recorded to help Pinellas Circuit Judge George W. Greer decide whether Schiavo could improve with treatment, as her parents insist, or has no hope of recovery, as her husband and her doctors argue.

Greer held a hearing on those questions last October. After hearing from the five doctors and watching hours of unedited videotaped examinations of Terri Schiavo, he agreed with three doctors who said she was in a persistent vegetative state and could not recover. Two of three, including Cranford, were selected by Michael Schiavo and one by the court. The two doctors selected by the Schindlers disagreed, basing their opinions primarily on Schiavo's response to brief stimuli, mostly involving contact with her mother.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal later agreed with Greer after a panel of three judges watched the tapes in their entirety.

Lawmakers did not do the same, nor review any medical testimony, before passing the bill giving the governor the power to restore Schiavo's artificial feedings. That, in part, is what outrages many critics of the unprecedented action.

UF's Allen said that is as preposterous as it would be to allow the Colorado Legislature to decide Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant's guilt on rape charges based on what they've seen on television.

But from where Hennessy sits, the videos are not only powerful but empowering, motivating untold numbers of people to do something about what they perceived as a grave injustice. She is her own best example.

A Web designer from Clearwater, Hennessy had for years watched the Schiavo-Schindler drama from the sidelines and thought it was time for Schiavo's parents to let her go.

She changed her mind when she first saw the videos. She couldn't stop sobbing. Suddenly, Schiavo was no longer an inert "vegetable" but a person whom the court would allow to starve to death.

Now Hennessy, an agnostic and a Green Party member, finds herself aligned with the religious right and anti-abortion activists now protesting outside Terri Schiavo's hospice.

She linked the videos to the Schindler family Web site in December, and seven months later launched a petition drive demanding the governor's intervention. It generated nearly 170,000 e-mails from around the world.

"Years ago, I would have said, 'I'm not going to get involved. I'm not going to vote. It doesn't matter,' " Hennessy said. "Well, it does matter. All these people who came forward to speak for Terri came forward one by one."

[Graymatter]

Give me a five-letter word, starting with T.

>>Your answer should be well thought out. It will
tell more about yourself than you may desire.

[sweetliberty]

See my post here regarding trolls.

My apologies to anyone who might have gotten pinged twice to this topic. Hard to keep y'all straught.

[Krodg]

My apologies to anyone who might have gotten pinged twice to this topic.

I certainly don't mind....it's one of the best posts I've seen on this site.

[Ohioan from Florida]

You're doing a great job, sweet liberty!

[F.J. Mitchell]

Better to be pinged twice than not at all. Never apologize for doing a good job.

[middie]

In an unusual event, you and I agree completely on the issue of the parents' standing to intervene in the action. The protestations to the contrary are an example of lawyers having lost their objectivity of law and procedure and instead have become nothing but spokespersons for a position of ideology not law.

That character Jay Seculew (regret the spelling), should step out from the facade' of asserting a seemingly arguable position of law and be honest by saying that he wants the parents to have standing because it suits his fanatic ideology and not any justicable interest.

While he, and those like him, rail about judges, as they pejoratively like to say, making up the rules of law as the go along according to their own personal desires, he now complains because a very good trial judge refuses to do exactly that. That's the sort of situational ethics that constitutes an absence thereof.

[GeekDejure]

Hard to keep y'all straught.

Umm... didja mean: Hard to keep y'all straight???

.

[shhrubbery!]

I guess web designers, like some un-named others here, are the determiners of medical fact.....

And there are "un-named others" here on FR who have determined that Terri Schindler Schiavo is "brain dead" -- a "medical fact" unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.

Oh, and then there's one here who has declared Terri Schindler Schiavo "a freak of nature."

Let's have no false modesty here: That person was you.

[shhrubbery!]

daylate-dollarshort asserts "medical fact" that Terri Schiavo is a "freak of nature"

daylate-dollarshort reaffirms the "medical fact" that Terri Schiavo is a "freak of nature"

[daylate-dollarshort]

If you're going to post at least get your statements right.

I said her Terri's cerebral cortex consisted of DEAD TISSUE- not that she was "brain dead". There is more than ample medical evidence of that.

As to the rest- "a freak of nature"- I, in all modesty, am proud to say that I did say that.

Other than that one slight error, thank you sincerely for the compliment.

[Robert A Cook PE]

We don't deduct points for spelling here.

[daylate-dollarshort]

Oh "shhrubery" there you go again........

Nowhere, in either of the post you cited, did I assert that "freak of nature" was attributable to a medical fact. I came up with that on my own. We're all entitled to our opinions- aren't we????

Could it be that you have a reading problem?? Perhaps dyslexic??

Maybe that's why you haven't understood the medical testimony in this case or bothered to read the four Second DCA decisions with references to the medical testimony.

[tutstar]

have you seen this???


Round #1 Judge votes FOR Terri.
Just got off the phone with Bay9 News asking them to pleae put Jusge Geerres runling on the internet because a lot of people outside of Florida are interested in this case today. I spoke with a nice young woman in the newsroom and she said they will have it on the internet in about an hour.

She read me what the AP Reporters posted jsut 10 minutes ago, and then she also explained it to me.

The Schindlers, Terri's parents have a case open to dismiss, HINO (Husband In Name Only) Michael as Terri's legal guardian. HINO's lawyers brought a motion before Judge Geere to Dismiss the parents lawsuite.

Today the jusdge said, "Michael, no way am I going to dismiss their lawsuite, furthermore you need to come back into court and answer two of their claims. Tell the court #1 how you have provided good medical care for her, #2 why you don't have a conflict of interest because you are fooling around with another woman."

I'll find the AP Wire and post it here. Just wanted to get this good news out ASAP. The newsroom person, and she was more the rporter or supervisor type, not a secretary type, responded very positivly to me when I said that in this country we can't go around starving peopel to death that the first amendment to the constituition says we ALL have the right to LIFE, Liberty and teh pursuit of happiness. LIFE is the #1 inalianable right we have. I mentioned what midwext state I am form and she seemed very much in agreement with me. she said, "I hear ya" especially when I said what a turd her husband is. I didn't bend her ear to much, but I did let he know that they have to provide the news on the internet and that this is NOT jsut a Florida issue. ;The whole country is watching. More after I find the AP wire

77 posted on 11/05/2003 4:55 PM EST by Lone Voice in the hinterlands

[Robert A Cook PE]

"Two of three, including Cranford, were selected by Michael Schiavo and one by the court.

So, all that proves is that ONE DOCTOR agreed with MS's paid shills.

Why kill an innocent woman while denying that person the same appeals and checks that are granted a murderer already proven guilty in a full jury trial.

Here, we have NOTHING but the unsubsupported hearsay evidence of the one person who wants her dead. And that person is the one most intimately involved with the circumstances that caused her to black out!