Posted on 04/07/2005 5:34:06 PM PDT by News Hunter
Edited on 04/07/2005 5:39:05 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Ms. Geddy lost it the second she walked into the court to ask for such a thing. The judge lost it when he granted it, and his decision to hold another hearing on Monday simply does not exempt him from the harshest of criticism for his intial ill-considered action.
No wonder the judge got criticized in his e-mails.
And hey, what's this nonsense of this judge thinking 100 e-mails is a large number? Is he some kind of part time monk/part time judge?
Just finished listening to the audio of Glenn Beck interviewing Mae's sister's son, Ken Mullineux.
OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
At the end of the interview ( maybe 10 minutes or so ) Ken spoke to what the hospice workers were telling him about why it was best for his Aunt Mae to die.
IT IS SO SURREAL and CREEPY is kinda makes your stomach ache.
GO TO GLENNBECK.COM ( yes....two N's in Glenn !)
Click on line that says Free audio: Glenn's interview with Aunt Mae's nephew...
On the page that comes up...click on the tiny CD beside the line the Ken Mullineux interview...
TALK ABOUT TWILIGHT ZONE ... that is an AMAZING STORY of the Hospice organization...FLAT OUT SCARY! (Not to mention how Gaddy has been acting!)
Perhaps that will change in the future, but only if state legislatures carefully craft legislation to make it happen. And it would have to be very carefully drafted in order to avoid unintended consequences in a different factual situation.
Um...probably because she, like many other hospice patients, was taking a goodly amount of Ativan. If you see a dentist who does "conscious sedation" for major procedures, you might have had Ativan yourself. It's not a state conducive to talking. FWIW
Maybe I'm just burned out on the whole matter, especially the legal issues of this case, but if that's so, why was the issue of whether Terri was in a PVS even before the court?
She accepted.
These sort of laws have been around for a very long time ~ no reason they can't be written to deal with these cases where the victim is beneficiary of a very large malpractice award.
Though this case appears to have been "resolved," what difference would it make if Ken had not had a bit of contact with Mae for the 10 years prior? Would that give Gaddy more of a right to do as she wished (despite the living will provisions)? Curious...
If Terri had had an honest guardian, she would have gotten a divorce (since Florida law does allow a guardian to file for divorce on behalf of an incapacitated ward). And if she'd had an honest judge, she would have gotten an honest guardian.
But regardless of the legal issue of 'marriage', I say that the deliberate destruction of a wife's wedding rings is not the act of a loving husband.
The story of Hospice IS amazing. It's not a story most people want to believe or even hear about.
The legal posture and conclusion is the opposite. That he was looking out for her best interests. Given her condition, and the court-determined patient's wish to be dead, her best interests were to obtain a natural death by starvation. It just happens that Michael's testimony and sense of "best interests" and the court's finding of "best interests" are congruent in this case, they needn't always be.
Because that is the way the original motion by Michael (requesting a court order for natural death by dehydration) was phrased. It's a sensible phrasing too, since the term of art, "PVS", appears in the statute. But as the Browning case illustrates, PVS is not a necessary element for obtaining the order that Michael sought.
In the scheme of things, it is easier to sell hastened death on the justification that the patient's mind is gone, etc., than it is to sell hastened death when it is AGAINST the patient's wishes. ;-)
I still haven't seen any of the trial evidence so I don't have a fully informed opinion.
My point with the statement you quoted was merely that Michael's decision about Terri was defined prior to the legal action, and it's not surprising that he'd be unwilling to change his mind after that date.
Determining constitutionality is an extremely tricky thing. Yes, for most day to day issues, a presumption of constitutionality is reasonable. But take such issues as the Nixon tapes and the Clinton refusal to provide documents. It was, in both cases, the courts that made the final determination.
None of the courts were asked by the litigants to determine the constitutionality of any of the matters before them
Therein lies probably the most critical issue. In 2001 attempts to bring the issue to the federal courts were properly met with negative rulings, since there apparently was no 14th Amendment rights violation proved. But later, when the Congress passed a bill to require the federal courts to intervene, of course, they did, but only to the extent of rebuffing federal attempts to make this a federal issue on its face.
Be interesting to see what they'd say about a county judge having authority to execute someone without any of the safeguards now in place to protect convicted criminals.
Well, I'm sure you realize that the issue was not considered execution, but complying with the wishes of a terminally ill brain damaged woman. Right or wrong, and good people disagree on this, that was the issue, plain and simple. But, having said that, I believe that the Schiavo case will probably eventually bring the federal government into the whole area of living wills, death wishes, medical technology, differences between life support and feeding mechanisms, etc. I hope not. But at the same time, I hope the states take a serious look at all of these issues.
Not to keep harping on the 10th Amendment, but it does empower the states with all of those rights not set aside for the federal government. And empowerment is a critical word. If a person is empowered, he is able to do things you may not approve of. If he can only do those things you approve of then of course, there is no empowerment. So it is with the states. Unless specific rights are violated, and so determined through courts of law, then the federal government, IMHO, has no business intervening. We so frequently accuse the courts of trying to legislate, in this case Congress was guilty of interfering with the legal process.
I always ITALICIZZZZE
Greer's orders and the opinions of the Florida 2nd District Court of Appeals are a good window. I've been able to sort through the various contentions here on FR regarding testimony that was excluded (e.g., Terri's friend's testimony that Micahals said "How the hell would I know what she would want? We never talked about that") or found not-believeable (e.g., Terri's mom relating a conversation that she and Terri had when Terri was 18, but the court concluded Terri was 11, so mom's testimony was not believable). Those points also appear in the court records. The extraneous information (e.g., the timing of Michael's recollection, withholding of therapy, and so on) is not really in dispute, even though it isn't part of the testimonial record.
All in all, it's an easy call for me, that Greer blew the finding of fact. Terri would not want to die as long as she was comfortable; and she would likely prefer staying alive in discomfort if her life brought love and joy to her siblings and parents.
But, the law is the law, and it reached the opposite conclusion. Once a finding of fact is reached in a civil matter, the burden of proof shifts to the losing party. Not a big deal when all that hangs in the balance is money, e.g., contested will. A bigger deal when the issue is custody, e.g., who gets to keep the kids. ANd an irreversible deal when life hangs in the balance.
Obviously you and I would have been on different sides at the beginning of the Civil War. Then, later on, you would have discovered the tyrants in Richmond had betrayed your trust, and only then would you desert to the forces of righteousness.
When I heard what the hospice workers where Aunt Mae was kept had to say to Ken Milleneux, from the audio I listened to at the www.glennbeck.com website....I ABOUT SCREAMED OUTLOUD! Talk about HORRIFIC!!!!!!!
That is a really interesting amendment. A good summary of its history and actual effect at limiting COngressional incursion into state power is available at:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/amdt10.html <-- Link
One thing that struck me is that the 10th is toothless in fact, because it can be molded to suit the outcome the Supreme Court desires. US v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941), notes that the 10th Amendment is nothing but a truism.
In 1941, the Court came full circle in its exposition of this Amendment. Having returned four years earlier to the position of John Marshall when it sustained the Social Security Act\27\ and National Labor Relations Act,\28\ it explicitly restated Marshall's thesis in upholding the Fair Labor Standards Act in United States v. Darby.\29\ Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice StoneThe summary of the legal effect of the 10th (as between feeral and state power) continues from there, and in fact, reaches the opposite conclusion that you do. The federal government has lots of power, but it can't prevent a state from acting as a state. The commerce clause and others provide more powerful restriction on the exercise of federal power than the 10th Amendment does,[[Page 1513]]
wrote: ``The power of Congress over interstate commerce `is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.' . . . That power can neither be enlarged nor diminished by the exercise or non- exercise of state power. . . . It is no objection to the assertion of the power to regulate interstate commerce that its exercise is attended by the same incidents which attended the exercise of the police power of the states. . . . Our conclusion is unaffected by the Tenth Amendment which . . . states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.''\30\\27\Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937); Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937).
\28\NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937).
\29\312 U.S. 100 (1941). See also United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 147 (1938); Case v. Bowles, 327 U.S. 92, 101 (1946).
\30\312 U.S. 100, 114, 123, 124 (1941). See also Fernandez v. Wiener, 326 U.S. 340, 362 (1945).
From the discussion in the appellate record about Terri's wishes, it's far less clear to me that it was established by clear and convincing testimony despite those rulings.
My best guess on that matter is that Terri had no clear intentions in that regard. Few women in their 20s do, at least until this case made the news. I didn't even address the issue until I reached my 40s and was facing major surgery.
I think Schiavo and Greer winged it on a couple of conversations that might not even have occurred and found clear and convincing evidence. There's something obviously wrong with that.
Well, if that's the worst thing you hear, considering all of the insults, scorn, disdain, etc that I put up with, you'll live. The lynch mob was the group of folks that responded on Thursday to a completely misleading article in WND, which led to threats against the local probate judge, complete condemnation of Beth Gaddy, fax and email campaigns aimed at every official in Georgia and the Congress, and complete scorn for any of us brave enough to suggest that the story appeared to be lacking some information.
Of course, unbeknownst to the "lynch mob", the whole matter had been put into a state of resolution several days earlier, and in the end, resulted in an apparently fair and reasonable resolution. But the point was that it was put in motion days before the lynch mob got started, and most of the information originally posted to start off this avalanche was either inaccurate or incomplete.
There were no less than 5 separate threads on this issue alone, and the rancor and hostility aimed at the devil freepers (me included) bordered on insanity at times. On another thread, I posted a laundry list of the insults thrown at me by just one God fearing Freeper.
After the Magouirk and Schiavo affairs, I now more clearly see why Sean Hannity said that FR was becoming a haven for lunatics. And why many thoughtful and intelligent Freepers have moved on.
I am always amazed at the people who seem only to want to communicate with "ditto" posters. Personally, I have never learned much from those with whom I agree, but far more often, those with whom I disagree.
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