Michael Schiavo Rebuffs Offer From Wife's Family
By DAVID SOMMER dsommer@tampatrib.com
Published: Jan 29, 2005
CLEARWATER - Michael Schiavo will not leave his wife to live on against what he maintains is Terri Schiavo's stated wish not to be kept alive with the help of a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, his attorney reiterated Friday. "Terri is not a piece of property that one person can give over to another,'' attorney George Felos said when asked why his client has rejected the latest offer made by his wife's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.
Comment from Cheryl : The Schindlers did not ask for Michael Schiavo to pass their daughter over to them like a piece of property. They asked Michael Schiavo to relinquish his rights as a guardian, and not dispose of their daughter like she is nothing more than a piece of property. The Schindlers wish to take their daughter home to love and care for her as any loving and responsible parents would do!
``He made a promise to his wife [not to keep her alive by artificial means], and that's what this case is about for him,'' Felos said.
Comment from Cheryl: Michael Schiavo also made a promise to love Terri in "sickness and in health" until death do they part. What happened to that promise? Michael has been sharing a residence with his fiance for the last nine years. They have two children. Their last child was born in October 2003 when Michael Schiavo was starving Terri (his wife) to death via dehydration and starvation.
Speaking on the courthouse steps after a hearing on the Schindlers' latest legal maneuver to keep their daughter alive, Bob Schindler said his son-in-law's position as a loyal husband upholding a promise to his brain-damaged wife is ``poppycock.''
Michael Schiavo has a common law marriage with another woman who has borne him at least two children, Schindler said. ``He's breaking his wedding vows by living with another woman.''
Schindler attorney David Gibbs III said he hoped that by going public with the settlement offer, Michael Schiavo might be persuaded to reconsider.
In an Oct. 26 letter to Schiavo's attorneys, Gibbs said the Schindlers wrote that they are prepared to sign over any rights to Terri Schiavo's marital assets or to any money or assets that might be left over from malpractice awards granted the couple after Terri Schiavo suffered heart failure and subsequent brain damage in 1990 at age 26.
Gibbs said Friday that would include any rights to book, television and movie deals stemming from the nationally publicized case.
Also in the October letter, the Schindlers offered to give Michael Schiavo any money or assets in their daughter's estate if he ends his struggle to have her feeding tube removed and she is allowed to die a natural death. They said he could dictate visitation rights, regardless of whether he divorced their daughter.
``The Schindlers would permit Michael's attorneys to draft any agreement regarding this matter that Michael would desire ... excluding payment of Michael's previous legal fees and costs,'' the letter states.
Twice, Michael Schiavo has won court permission to disconnect his wife's feeding tube so she would die from lack of nutrition and hydration. Both times, the feeding tube was reinserted, most recently in October 2003 on orders of Gov. Jeb Bush.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Bush's appeal of a Florida Supreme Court finding that the special legislative measure known as ``Terri's Law,'' which allowed Bush to intervene, was enacted in violation of the state constitution.
Comment from Cheryl : If the state constitution does not support the Governor and his prudent actions for his intervening in time to save the cruel and unusual murder of an innocent disabled woman, then it is time for Florida residents to URGENTLY revisit the state constitution. There is obviously a major flaw in what it says!
Michael Schiavo contends that his wife is in a persistent vegetative state, unaware of her surroundings. The Schindlers say their daughter reacts to them and could improve with therapy.
It is Amazing how the Sons of Darkness come up with these Types of Sayings, and how they Call evil Good, and Good evil. When Felos was on with Greta, his Satanic Speech Literally Sickened me. O Lord, please Guard people's minds against these Buzzwords and Slogans that Spring from Darkness!
Florida’s Constitution states:
SECTION 9. Due process.--“No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law…”
And what due process is guaranteed in a cases in which the state is called upon to deprive one of life, liberty or property?
SECTION 22. Trial by jury.--The right of trial by jury shall be secure to all and remain inviolate.
The protection of a trial by jury was waived by Terri’s adulterous husband and her parents, and done so without her knowing or willing consent. So, unless one believes that Terri is nothing more than the property of either her adulterous husband or her parents, and they and not Terri are afforded the above mentioned constitutional protections intended to protect their “property”, from all those who would attempt to undermine rights associated with “property ownership, then I can understand why one would believe that Terri has no right to the protection of a jury, nor a right to be represented by legal counsel, as such thinking would be based upon the notion that the case is not about Terri’s rights, but about rights associated with property ownership which her parents and adulterous husband, the litigants, now fight over.
Unlike the starve Terri to death crowd, I see this case as a very important case, a case involving Terri’s rights, and not her adulterous husband’s rights nor her parents rights___ a case initiated because Terri left no written or oral end of life instructions, and the state was called upon, by Terri’s adulterous husband, to starve Terri to death.
And so, although our system is not perfect, it does provide a remedy when the state is called upon to end a person’s life. The wise framers of our constitution contemplated that when the state is called upon to exercise its power in the taking of life, the state acts in the name of the people. And because the state acts in the name of the people, our founding fathers provided a provision for the people to be part of the decision making process, especially when the state is called upon to end a person’s life. That process is called a jury, in which the commonsense judgment of the community is to be represented, and not the whims and fancies of a judge, [judge greer] who acted as a judge, jury, counsel and decision maker for Terri, and then arbitrarily concluding Terri wants to be starved to death and the power of the state ought to be used to end Terri’s life.
Although it would be a very difficult job to sit on such a jury, a jury which would be deciding what Terri wanted, if indeed there is evidence to conclude what she wanted, it is part of our legal process, it is all we have, and should be adhered to.
Unfortunately, Terri has been denied the protection of a jury, by two interested parties in the case who waived Terri’s right to the protection of a jury, and so, she has been denied the commonsense judgment of the community which was meant to be part of Terri’s due process of law in a case in which the state has been called upon to end her life.
"The purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power -- to make available the commonsense judgment of the community as a hedge against the over-zealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or perhaps overconditioned or biased response of a judge." See,Justice Byron White in in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 US 522 , 530 (1975)
Also see: Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 106, (1895):
“The trial was thus conducted upon the theory that it was the duty of the court to expound the law, and that of the jury to apply the law as thus declared to the facts as ascertained by them. In this separation of the functions of court and jury is found the chief value, as well as safety, of the jury system. Those functions cannot be confounded or disregarded without endangering the stability of public justice, as well as the security of private and personal rights.”
The question is, can anyone produce case law in which the state has been called upon to exercise its power to end a person’s life, and that person was not represented in court by counsel, and likewise had their right to the protection of a jury waived by interested parties in the case and done so without the knowing and willing consent of the person the state has been called upon to put to death?
JWK