Posted on 03/28/2005 9:06:49 AM PST by Doctor13
The judge who tried the Terri Schiavo case and most recently rejected Gov. Jeb Bush's request to intervene, received a campaign contribution from the lawyer pressing for the brain-injured woman's death, raising questions of a conflict of interest.
According to Florida's Department of State, County Circuit Court Judge George W. Greer received a contribution of $250 for his 2004 re-election campaign from Felos & Felos, the law firm of George Felos.
Felos, known as a "right-to-die" advocate, represents Terri Schiavo's estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, who won a court order from Greer to have the woman's life-sustaining feeding tube removed one week ago.
The contribution's apparent conflict of interest was raised by an Internet site investigating the Schiavo case, the Empire Journal, and by Rev. D. James Kennedy's group Center for Reclaiming America.
The contribution from Felos came May 7, 2004, one day after Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge Douglas Baird ruled "Terri's Law" unconstitutional. The Florida Legislature's measure was designed to enable Gov. Bush to intervene in the previous instance in which Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed.
The contribution from Felos was the only one made that day, indicating it was not part of a fund-raising effort.
The Empire Journal also reported contributions to Greer were made by three other lawyers who represented Michael Schiavo at various stages in the case.
Deborah Bushnell, Gwyneth Stanley and Stephen G. Nilsson each contributed at least $250 to Greer's re-election campaign, as did court-appointed attorneys representing the husband's interest, Pacarek & Herman and Richard Pearse.
WND attempted to reach the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, the independent body that investigates complaints against state judges, but there was no response.
Felos' office in Dunedin, Fla., also could not be reached.
The Empire Journal notes that in Florida, a judge is not required to recuse himself if he receives a contribution from an attorney in a case over which he presides.
Nevertheless, a contribution can establish the appearance of impropriety, and the state's code of judicial conduct requires a judge to remove himself in such a case.
Ronald D. Rotunda, professor of law at George Mason University, told the Empire Journal he sees such contributions as problematic.
He cites a 2002 poll of the American Bar Association concluding 84 percent of all Americans are concerned that the impartiality of judges is compromised by their need to raise campaign contributions.
Rotunda said judicial campaign contributions constitute or appear to constitute a tacit quid pro quo in which the judge favors or tilts towards the contributor-litigant.
The implication of this horrid crime - the snuffing of Terri Schiavo in a way we wouldn't put down a soulless animal - goes beyond the cause of the infirm.
Think about this.
You have a judge making a decision of life or death on an innocent woman - a judge who is up to his comb-over in conflicts of interest:
1. Political conttibutions from the lawyer
2. Wife on the hospice board
3. Proclivity toward Scientology attitudes toward the utilitarian nature of a human being
No.1 should have stopped this dead in its tracks; if that doesn't work, No. 2 MUST be the showstopper, right? - how could it not be? Even No. 3 implies a decided bias based on religious beliefs - the same "bias" that Democrats have for many years cried about from the rooftops regarding abortion and "equal rights.
Here we are. Terri Schiavo's dehydrating to death. We have a landmark case - a case of life and death - and the futures of thousands of nameless, faceless invalids may hang in the balance. We have a hospice residency that violates the very definition of what a hospice stay is supposed to entail - PEOPLE ARE SENT TO HOSPICES TO DIE - they are NOT sent to be treated. No doctor signed off Terri's admission to hospice? None.
Are you kidding me? Has NONE of this struck the powers that be in Florida as corrupt? Suspicious? Hell, "oddly amusing"? ANYTHING??? A woman is dying. There's no documentation that she EVER said she wanted to be put down (and certainly not by dehy/starvation). The lawyer has a conflict of interest, the judge has at least TWO major conflicts of interest, the "husband" has a overt conflict of interest going on for fifteen years now, and no one - NO ONE in Florida government or Washington D.C. is looking at this and saying - "Wait - this stinks to high heaven - first and foremost, Greer cannot be impartial, the lawyer cannot be impartial, Michael Schiavo has already proven he wants only one outcome ---
WHERE ARE OUR ELECTED LEADERS!????
WHERE!!!!!????
I'm sorry, folks. I hate to use hyperbole, but there is a cancer eating away at every branch of government. We've lived with corruption - we've accepted that government is a place of bribes and infidelity and huge egoes that offer a neverending amount of lipservice about the Constitution and civic duty and patriotism and "the people".
I expected Democrats to look away (and not all of them did - some came to their senses), but what I didn't expect was that my party - the Republican party - inhabited by a legendary crew of weak sisters - would let Terri Schiavo go to her death with all of this evidence of impartiality - at the minimum, the PREPONDERANCE of impartiality - at their fingertips. Given that this is a matter of life and death, at the very LEAST, Judge Greer should have recused himself from the matter. Since that did not happen, it fell to the legistlative and executive branches of government to at LEAST step in, point out the pink elephant in the room, and say - "get it outta here". They did NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING.
NOTHING.
We have no Constitution. We have no one to fend for our lives. Will they even fend for our shores? The constitution is dead.
</rant>
$250 = how many pieces of silver?
"...Terri was more peaceful looking..."
Maybe that is the reason he does not allow cameras in the room. If he did, even his supporters would hate him ('xept for Ted Kennedy, that is). I wonder how the cops feel?
Jey Sekulow on radio today said that this is no big deal. Lawyers frequently give campaign donations to judges in their area. Though, IMO, it doesn't sound very ethical.
right on...that is what scares me the most...I know this is the begining of the end for this nation..and I will tell you why....I think many people like me who have defended this country all the time have given up...I know I would not help the state of florida..the people voted for the judge...the people just sit there and do nothing.
I can hardly wait to watch on tv the next big hurricane hit florida. I pray for a really big one.
It is confounding that the SCOTUS saw nothing they could act on in this case. Does anyone know what their reasoning was?
It is confounding that the SCOTUS saw nothing they could act on in this case. Does anyone know what their reasoning was?
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The thread started out about the lawyer's contribution to the judge's campaign. That is all I was talking about. Go spew your snake venom at someone else!
I gave my opinion about something. What kind of proof do you want that it is my opinion?
Of course. It's an old boys club.
Just looking for proof that the Schindlers' lawyers gave money to Greer . . . until that's shown, the moral relativism implied in your *opinion* is baseless, as if two wrongs would make a right even if it could be proven.
Wrong.
To be clear, a judge should avoid not only real conflicts but also any appearances of impropriety. Accepting money from a lawyer who has a pending matter before him has sufficient indicia of impropriety to constitute grounds for a censure from a higher body. Two wrongs do not make it right. In other words, if both Schiavo's attorneys and the Schindlers' attorneys gave Greer money, and he accepted it, it's two counts against Greer and not just one.
Given how Greer is the only judge to make findings in this case, I'd say he's fair game for further investigation.
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