Felos continually whines about the “separation of power” between the judicial branch of government and legislature with regard to Terri‘s Law, but he conveniently forgets the separation of powers and duties between judge and jury and that Judge Greer unconstitutionally assumed the duties of a jury and arbitrarily decided what Terri wants.
In Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 106, (1895) Justice Harland wrote:
“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 ultimate decision in this case will very likely be decided, if pressed, in the SCOTUS via the Fourteenth Amendment and the blatant depravation of Terri’s right to due process of law, in that she has not received her guaranteed right to the protection of a jury in a case in which her life and liberty may be determined by the authority of the state.
Judge Green had no authority to act as judge and jury and determine the facts in Terri’s case as related to what she allegedly wants without her knowing and willing consent to waive the protection of a jury in determining such facts.
I know there are many who pretend Florida’s Constitution does not guarantee an individual [translation meaning Terri] the protection of a jury in determining the facts in a case in which their life and liberty is at stake, but as they shall soon learn, this right is a fundamental right, in every state in our union, and cannot be waived without one’s knowing and willing consent, especially in a case in which their life and/or liberty is to be determined by the authority of the state. Terri has never knowingly and willingly waived the protection of a jury.
The right to the protection of a jury is part of America’s due process of law:
In 1794, in the first jury trial held before the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay, the first Chief Justice instructed jurors thusly: "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that the courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision. The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy."
And, Justice Byron White wrote in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 US 522 , 530 (1975
"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."
-- JWK
American Constitutional Research Service
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."___Thomas Jefferson put it a letter to Tom Paine in 1789