The key facts lost only once essentially. There were appeals on process and law, but it was one of subjective judgement by Greer that put in stone the lie that Terri wants to die and that she is PVS.
Ok. I think maybe just laying out the, yes, previous, evidence on these two issues and saying: Here's the crux, the nexus of the case, obviously there's a lot of room for a completely different finding of fact. For example, the judge ruled Terri wants to die based on equal hearsay for and against. He included "public opinion surveys." Take the same set to ten judges and it's quite likely you get at least five to go the other way. Same with the PVS. Plenty of fuzziness here in the science.
We do not have notarized signatures of Terri, we don't even have hearsay less that three ten years old. We do not have MRI or PET scans or even the minimum medical experts today say is needed to reasonable conclude PVS. We have fuzziness resulting in findings of fact that could just as easily, more easily, go the other way.
Secondly, there is certainly new evidence they could produce, new science, studies, opinions regarding her medical condition.
And finally, no matter what the likely outcome, the clear intent of the law was a new trial and that she be alive til it finished.
As the minority opinion illustrated tonight, you can build an opinion for injunction on this alone.
And I appreciate you being the "voice of negativity." It's useful to us layfolks.
Yeah, but we already know that there's a dispute over the facts and evidence - that's why this thing is in court to begin with, to resolve that dispute. Simply showing that you can make an argument the other way isn't enough to get an injunction - you have to show a substantial likelihood that your argument will prevail. You need to show that you've got as near to a slam-dunk case as you can ever get in the law, and that's an extremely difficult standard here, one that I don't see how the Schindlers could possibly have met.
And finally, no matter what the likely outcome, the clear intent of the law was a new trial and that she be alive til it finished.
I'm not so sure. Congress had the power to grant statutory relief - they could have mandated an injunction, but they didn't, and so the courts fall back on the usual standards for injunctive relief, which is where the Schindlers ran into major problems. Congress left the issueof an injunction up to the courts, and the courts applied the same standard they always do, which members of Congress surely should have foreseen. This was not a surprise, and shouldn't have been a surprise Delay or Frist or any of those other guys. Now, I tend to think that they probably couldn't have gotten a bill through that mandated an injunction, but they surely must have known what the result of a bill that had no such mandate would inevitably be.