Posted on 05/05/2005 5:51:50 AM PDT by NYer
George W. Greer, the Florida judge who ordered Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, will receive an award today from his law colleagues, but a spiritual adviser to the late brain-injured woman's parents still insists the jurist is a "murderer."
"On the night before Terri Schiavo died, I said to the national media that Judge Greer was a murderer," said Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.
"I repeat that today," he said. "I use the word not in its legal meaning but in its moral meaning, that is, a deliberate action or series of actions that intentionally kill an innocent person."
Greer, who presided over the Schiavo case for seven years, will be honored with the Special Justice Award by the local West Pasco Bar Association.
Schiavo died March 31, nearly two weeks after her life-sustaining feeding tube was removed by Greer's order, carried out more than a decade of bitter legal wrangling between parents Robert and Mary Schindler and their son-in-law Michael Schiavo, who contended Terri had verbally expressed a desire to not live if she were in such a condition.
"Terri was not dying until she stopped receiving food and water," Pavone said. "Once deprived of that sustenance, she died. It does not require any legal or medical expertise to recognize that as murder. Nobody who has lost the basic capability to understand that should be honored."
Alan Scott Miller, a member of the West Pasco Bar Association, told the Tampa Tribune Greer's professionalism and integrity was punctuated by the way he handled the Schiavo case.
"He's getting this award for all of his contributions on the bench, not just the Schiavo case,'' Miller said. "It's like a lifetime achievement award for an actor.''
Pavone said, "Whatever judgment, furthermore, is made on Judge Greer's legal authority to do what he did, no court has the moral authority to directly and deliberately take innocent life, and those ordered to carry out such decisions are morally obliged to resist them by conscientious objection. Pope John Paul II made that teaching clear in his encyclical letter 'The Gospel of Life.'"
Some of the appeals to Greer's rulings, which were upheld, argued there was not enough clear and convincing evidence that Terri Schiavo had expressed a wish to not live in her current condition.
Greer's court in Pinellas County, Fla., determined she was in a persistent vegetative state. The Schindlers countered that assessment with statements from neurologists who claimed she was in a "minimally conscious state," able to respond to stimuli.
The Schindlers had pleaded with their son-in-law to allow them to be with their daughter in her final hours, but according to family spokesmen, they were not present when she died.
Pavone was in Terri's room at Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., about 15 minutes before she died. But the priest said he was instructed to leave 10 minutes before her death by order of Michael Schiavo.
"His heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," Pavone said of Terri's estranged husband, who for 10 years has lived with another woman with whom he has two children.
After Terri died, immediate family members were allowed in the room, the priest said.
Pavone said on the day of her death, "This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, this is a killing. We not only grieve for Terri, we grieve that our nation would allow such an atrocity as this, and we pray it will never happen again."
For background on the 15-year saga, read "The whole Terri Schiavo story."
WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the Terri Schiavo story since 2002 – far longer than most other national news organization – and exposing the many troubling, scandalous, and possibly criminal, aspects of the case that to this day rarely surface in news reports. Read WorldNetDaily's unparalleled, in-depth coverage of the life-and-death fight over Terri Schiavo, including over 150 original stories and columns.
Court documents and other information are posted on the Schindler family website.
Links to all "Terri briefs" regarding the governor's defense of Terri's Law are on the Florida Supreme Court website, public information.
I think the last part of your statement is correct (class of people vs individual). For whatever reason, the Court was comfortable letting the lower courts' opinions stand. And remember, the federal appealate court had 2 REPUBLICAN appointees that found in favor with Greer's decisions and a democrat who dissented. Interesting.
This is happening all of the time now and has been building over the years. Yes, there are good judges and for the most part you don't hear about them. But the bad judges, legislating from the bench, letting molesters, rapists, and murders free are the ones that are directly affecting the public. These are the judges that need to be reigned in and Congress has the power, maybe not the will, to do so.
How many times have we heard Legislatures in various states and the Congress pass laws again and again only to have them shot down or interpreted by some rogue judge or court in a perverse way (9th Circuit a huge culprit)?
Yes, there is a big problem with Judges in this country and I am sorry if I offend your Judicial friends, you being a lawyer and all.
imo
Ping!
But that is my point exactly---the trouble with some judges is that they do not follow the will of the legislature...this one did...with respect to the law passed on her behalf, I admit up front, I am not sure on what basis the court found it problematic...but Greer wasn't the only one, a court with 2 republican appointees found no error.
The ninth circuit is a travesty...I am not offended at all by what you write about them!
And THIS is why Jeb Bush and George Bush, and the sheriff and all the cops who guarded the killing hospice, are murderers, also. They obeyed the orders of Judge Greer that Terri was to be murdered.
Having obeyed similar orders from the Supreme Court for 32 years, all these people long ago lost the integrity that would have enabled them to resist Judge Greer's commands to participate in murder.
If Jeb Bush was convinced that disobeying Judge Greer was tantamount to revolution, then he was obligated to resign from the governorship. As it is, he has to live with the choice he made: He chose to participate in a murder, in order to remain Governor of Florida. All the cops made the same choice, in order to keep their jobs.
In that case, then, I agree with you. And good point.
Come on. You really want to blame the cops? Jeb Bush? If Schiavo had a written will stating no feeding tube, would that make the cops murderers, assuming the parents wanted to stop or enjoin the hospice from removing the tube?
Hellooooooo
Where have you been?
You are knocking your head against a brick wall right now. We have been informed that at least on this topic facts don't matter. My advice is move on, these threads aren't for normal discussion (as you will soon find out).
We need more priests like Fr. Pavone and fewer Bishops like Lynch who left the country while the execution was being conducted so that he wouldn't have to make any public comments about it.
Can of worms...opened.
I think you might be on to something!
I wasn't on the board while most of the hoopla was going on...it is definitely an emotional issue.
It is true that THE LAW in Florida, signed by Jeb Bush in 1999, defines a feeding tube as "life support." But that is ONLY element of the THE LAW that could be said to have forced Judge Greer in the direction of ordering Terri's killing.
He systematically excluded and/or ignored all evidence that would have weakened Michael Schiavo's FACTUAL claims. It was Greer's corrupt findings of "fact" that doomed Terri, not THE LAW alone.
That's because appellate courts never review the original FINDINGS OF FACT. Greer's findings of fact were never reviewed by all those appellate courts, and thus it is bogus and propagandistic to refer to "all those judges who supported Greer's decisions." Greer's findings of "fact" were corrupt, because he is a euthanasia enthusiast, in cahoots from the get-go with Felos, Schiavo, the killing-hospice directors, etc.
Yes, Republicans can be murderers, too. E.g., Harry Blackmun, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, etc.
You've hit the nail on the head. And that's what's wrong with Law School 101. Law School 101 now teaches that the DEFENDANTS at Nuremburg were correct: I was only following the Law, so you have no business putting me on trial.
Which law is it that says you can kill people by stopping their food and water?
No argument there
In that case, then, I agree with you. And good point.
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