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.
Love hearing the line, "the judge followed the RULE OF LAW". How about following the RULE OF LAW and deporting the Illegal Aliens in our country.
Sound like selective law enforcement to me.
No doubt...that issue (illegal immigration and the lack of enforcement) drives me crazy.
"THE LAW is an ass," and proved it for the world to see in this case. This judge made some serious errors in the finding of facts at the beginning of the case and THE LAW was unable and unwilling to make any attempt to correct the errors in this life or death matter.
You really should do some reading on the "Full Employment Act for the Legal Profession" that has been running at full tilt and below the radar in Pinellas Co. If you are in agreement with what the probate judges and guardianship program is up to, you might consider migrating to a warmer climate like the rest of the New York lawyers.
They all chose to participate in the "judicial homicide" rather than to expose a BIPARTISAN scandal that envelops the legal profession in FL in regard to the Probate-Guardianship program. Money talks (especially to hungry lawyers without enough business to maintain an appropriate lifestyle.)
Actually they didn't decide the case on THE LAW-if they had, they would have opened the case for more testimony like the US Senate ASKED them to do, signed by President Bush.
"All Florida has to do is require a living will...make the person put it in writing that they don't want to be kept alive...if that happens, puff....no more controversy..."
I think living will laws could lead to nightmarish scenarios. Here's how:
Please imagine for a moment that you're a 14-year-old girl with a 60-year-old teacher. The teacher has warts, she moves like a turtle, she wears tacky print shirtwaist dresses. You turn to your friend and whisper, "I don't want to live to be that old." And your 14-year-old self really means it. Aging and death have no reality to you. But one day you wake up, and you're 60. And ... life isn't too bad after all.
Now, imagine you're 26-year-old Terri Schiavo. After watching a TV movie about the plight of a pathetic human "vegetable," you turn to your husband and say, "I wouldn't want to live like that! No tubes for me." Then one day Terri wakes up and ... she is like that. Is she getting anything out of life? Is she feeling any pleasure? We can't know because she has passed beyond the point where she can communicate with us. She is a different person, as surely as an elderly woman is a different person from her young self.
How can we know what that life is like? How can we judge its quality? Should the profoundly disabled person getting some pleasure from life be protected from the thoughtless assumptions of her younger self? Who decides?
Many humane governments require living will plus some other assurances as safeguards. I like Fr. Pavone's suggestion that appointing a proxy is smarter and safer than making a living will.
I vass chust followink ze Nuremberg lawss!
It vass the law! Vhat vass I to do?
Comparing Jeb Bush and others to the devils at Nuremberg is an insult to everyone from Jewish people, to the US servicemen who fought and died bringing those people to justice--not to mention Jeb Bush et al.
I imagine you know this and your post is merely hyperbole. At least, that is what I hope.
yes they are.
Not in the case of George Greer, it isn't.
The Nuremberg laws did not only viciously target Jews, but also other ethnic groups and - what is most relevant for this comparison - the infirm and disabled.
George Greer ensured that Terri Schiavo received treatment even worse than that which was perpetrated against the disabled by German judges who were enforcing the Nuremberg laws.
Time for the Bishops like Lynch to get some remedial education in Rome for about 20 years. I am sure Benedict XVI can find many good replacements. A few suggestions Bishop Fessio, Bishop Pavone, Bishope Pacwa, Bishop Corapi, Bishop Goreschel, etc... I am sure there are many more priests who know they are Catholic and not spending all their time sucking up to the left and drooling over temporal power...
Fr. Pavone is an honest, courageous man of God. I would trust him with my life.
Well no, actually, this case was not decided based on the law. Many laws were broken in pursuit of Terri's murder. The Legislature writes the laws. The Judiciary is supposed to uphold the laws. In this case, as in many cases, they didn't.
The Florida law does not target anyone...it is far from the Nuremberg laws...and again, if it is so heinous, where the heck is the legislature now? Now that the cameras are gone, why isn't the legislature striking the law that allowed this to happen? Rather than belly-aching and whining about a particular judge who, as a fact finder, came to a conclusion he was entitled to UNDER THE CURRENT LAW OF FLORIDA, why don't you work to get the law changed?
Waiting for your answer.
_Memory_and_Identity_
"If man can decide by himself, without God, what is good and what is bad, he can also determine that a group of people is to be annihilated."
Bravo to Father Frank for telling like it is.
Tulane should follow your advice unless he is a glutton for punishment.
Cute.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.