Felos used the courts in Terri's case to further his agenda
Posted on 06/05/2005 11:45:26 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1411293/posts
Of course we know he's in Florida so he'll get off scott free.
Went to your link to the article by the Chicago neurologist who reviewed the autopsy findings....this is a physician with a good heart. Thanks for providing the link.
Any word on how the vampire is doing? Has his fee for speaking (he made money off Terri for a long time, just like the monster did) gone up?
Are the friends Michael took in to gawk at Terri, while she was starving and thirsting desparately, talking yet about the thrill of seeing someone being legally murdered in a nazi like style?
From Cheryl Ford
8mm
Click here: QCTimes.com - The Quad-City Times Newspaper
http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2005/06/29/news/local/doc42c22a45de263596990790.txt
Passions are still high over Schiavo case
By Thomas Geyer
Nearly three months after Terri Schiavo died after her feeding tube was removed, passions remain high over the seven-year legal battle between the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman's husband, Michael, and her parents.
Terri's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, fought to save their daughter, a battle that was played out in the media all over the world as well as in the Florida and federal courts and in the highest reaches of the national government.
Those same type of passions were evident Tuesday night during a discussion of the Schiavo case at the Tri-City Jewish Center in Rock Island, which featured an eight-member panel that included theologians, a neurosurgeon and an attorney.
The opinions of the panel revolved around whether her feeding tube should have been removed, and the rights of her husband and parents, and varied widely in some instances.
But one thing was clear, said panelist Rabbi Henry Karp, of Temple Emanuel, Davenport: Everyone should have a living will and an advanced directive on file so their families will not be torn apart.
Davenport neurosurgeon Byron Rovine explained the woman's physical condition; that for 15 years Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovering.
"Oxygen deprivation damaged the upper centers of her brain," he said. "She would have sleep and waking cycles, she would make noises and facial expressions."
She could not swallow and had to be fed and hydrated by a feeding tube, he added.
And except for the medical ethics of providing competent medical care and respecting the rights and dignity of the patient, there are few decisions doctors make in such an instance, he said.
Several of the panelists, including Keith Soko, professor of moral theology at St. Ambrose University, Davenport, along with Karp, and the Rev. Leo Gavrilos of St. George Greek Orthodox Church, Rock Island, believe that removing Schiavo's feeding tube given her condition was ethical, and that it was not euthanasia.
Schiavo died March 31, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.
"Euthanasia is playing at God by humans," Gavrilos said, adding that modern medical technology can interfere with natural death. "Thirty years ago, there would not have been a
decision to make," he said.
What most of the panel was upset about was the interference in what all termed a family tragedy.
Most offensive was at the federal level where there was "the spectacle of politicians playing to a base audience," said the Rev. Ron Quay of Churches United of the Quad-City Area.
From a faith perspective, he added, "The Bible does not address the issue because it was unknown to the writers of scriptures."
Sadly, said the Rev. Robert Moon of the Quad-City Association of Evangelicals, American culture has become a culture of death.
"For 30 years we have been debating when life begins," he said. "Now we're arguing over when life ends."
Moon said he has concerns that Schiavo's parents seemed to be more concerned for her life than husband Michael, and that the woman's wishes did not seem to be clearly known.
But Rabbi Michael Samuel of the Tri-City Jewish Center was adamant that removing her feeding tube amounted to active euthanasia.
"Michael Schiavo did not serve his wife's interests," he said. "Her mother and father represented Terri's better interests."
He said Terri Schiavo was not dying, and that the state she was in does not take away any part of her humanity, and that she could have lived for years.
The audience was just as passionate as the panel.
Moon suggested that Michael Schiavo was an adulterer and therefore had no more standing in the case of his wife. But Karp said Michael Schiavo has gotten a bad rap.
"The autopsy coincided with the diagnosis," he said. "There was no evidence of abuse, no evidence that he strangled her, no evidence he gave her drugs."
The autopsy, he said, showed conclusively that she never would have recovered, he said.
Davenport psychiatrist Alice Harpring, sitting in the audience, noted that there is a lot of technology that aid with detailed diagnoses.
"We have CAT scans and MRIs and PET scans," she said. "But where is the soul? Did her soul leave her 15 years ago and we just maintained the shell?"
"It used to be so easy to look at people and say, ‘It's in God's hands.' Before now, all we had was our neurological evaluations."
"We are our memories," she added. "Without our memories, what are we?"
Thomas Geyer can be contacted at (563) 383-2328 or tgeyer@qctimes.com.
Coming Soon!
READ
Over 400 pages
Trafford Publishing: Our Fight4Terri
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/robots/05-1041.html
The first expose and sourcebook on the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case! Discover the true facts behind the most significant legal battle over constitutional rights of the disabled in history. Read the actual documents. Discover the dangers all Americans face with Terri's death!
Fight4Terri @aol.com
Theresa Marie Schindler
December 3, 1963 ~ March 31, 2005
Light a candle For Terri at her online Memorial Website
Memory-of.com - Memorial website in memory of Theresa Schindler (1963-2005)
http://theresa-schindler.memory-of.com/about.aspx
Visit: www.fight4terri.blogspot.com
Cheryl Ford, RN (Fight4Terri@aol.com) is not affiliated with any other group and works to protect the rights of the disabled community.
Watch for the July Dailies coming soon.
8mm
Attention Pro-lifers; contact President Bush and ask him to pick a pro-life U.S. Supreme Court judge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1434687/posts?page=23
I, on the other hand, think he is both.
Come to think of it, it's hard to say which is worse, the criminal or the lawyer.
http://www.therealitycheck.org/GuestColumnist/dredscott_terrischiavo-4.pdf
Check this out, please.
Sun, thank you. I checked it out and am glad I did. In light of the upcoming vacancy in the Supremes, the analysis and comparison is powerful and poignant. It galvanized what we suspected on the scene just days before he wrote this.
I really hope this gets lots of readership. The timing is right.
8mm
Barf Alert
"Terri died a very peaceful death, a very calm death. It was very dignified."
"Her husband was cradling her head. Her brother-in- law was there. I was there. There were at least 4 hospice workers there. Touching her. Holding her."
"It was a very, very calm release. Mrs. Schiavo died with dignity and she also died according to her wishes. That's the most important thing."
"Her brother and sister were not there. And Michael Schiavo has been accused of heartless cruelty for requiring them to leave the room before she died."
" This was her death. She had a right to have her last few moments on this Earth one of peace, calm and without acrimony."
"...the constant barrage against Mr. Schiavo, which I think is cruel and inhumane, doesn't lead to a spirit of healing."
I've had that posted on my site for a while, and there is at least one thread on FR about it. I don't know how you missed it. I'm not sure if the link you gave is the corrected and edited one but I have it on my page.
Powerful and inspiring but it left me somewhat frightened.
Will the states all take different stands on euthanasia effectively recreating devisions like where present just prior to the civil war with "Death" States being pitted against "Living" states?
What is all this leading to? People can continue to pretend that emotions are no longer high about this because it is not in the MSM as much but I find that everywhere I go people are still very much upset about it.
I don't see the Judiciary admitting to ignoring the Constitution anytime soon.
So then what will satisfy the need to correct this egregious wrong?
Time will tell I suppose.
"Mr. Schiavo asked me to make an announcement. Mr. Schiavo intends to release photos of Mrs. Schiavo's brain. He feels that it is important for everyone to see what the brain of a vegetative patient looks like."
Interesting indeed, and elegantly argued. The law idiots won't get it (of course), but citizens who have not had their minds turned to Swiss cheese in law school will read this with great profit.
I think i am ill! BARF!!!!!!!!!
I have Mark Fuhrman's book and am half way through. It is VERY INTERESTING!! No emotion; just the facts. It makes Michael Schiavo look just the monster he is.
The media just can't get enough of George Felos. He's their kinda guy.
Excellent summary on Terri:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=37860
The Day We Hit Rock Bottom
by Pamela Hennessy
On March 31, 2005 and much to my chagrin, I found myself agreeing with conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh for the first (and possibly last) time in my life. Only hours after the death of Florida woman, Terri Schiavo, Limbaugh opened his daily talk show program with the assertion that all Americans should mark this date on their calendars as “the day our country hit rock bottom”.
He’ll get no argument from me.
On March 31, after over 13 days without the provisions of food and fluids, Terri Schiavo – age 41 – died in a Florida Hospice. Some would call it the end of a long battle for life and others would see it as the end of years trapped in a body she no longer wanted.
I saw it very differently. I saw it as the most outrageous and excruciating invasion of privacy ever inflicted on an innocent person by our government and elected officials.
While some were railing the United States Congress and the Governor of the State of Florida for trying to intervene on Ms. Schiavo’s behalf, most – if not all – missed the point of how the state government itself encroached her personal privacy in ordering that she die.
Terri Schiavo committed to no living will or advanced medical directive prior to her initial injuries in 1990. She left no written instructions as to her medical treatment desires or whether or not she would deny herself any specific healthcare intervention.
But a state court ordered her dead.
This point is not to be missed. It was not until 9 years after her initial injury that Florida Statutes held it lawful to remove enteral nourishment (tube feedings) from non-dying patients – and this was only under certain circumstances. In 1999, and after some considerable schmoozing to the legislature from a panel convened to advise on the ethics at the end of life, the statutes were changed to allow for the removal of enteral nourishment from patients determined to be in a ‘persistent vegetative state’.
Funny thing about that particular advisory panel is that a number of its members (Mary Labyak, Lofty Basta, Michael Bell, etc.) were co-workers to attorney George Felos at the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast. Felos represented the legal interests of Michael Schiavo in guardianship matters as well as in his campaign to affect his wife’s death by pursuing the removal of her feeding tube.
Even more uncomfortable is the fact that original petition to discontinue Terri’s enteral nourishment was filed to the court in 1998 – more than a year before such a petition was even legal.
The petition was accepted into the court’s docket by Judge Mark Shames. This judge was previously attorney Mark Shames who had briefly counseled the parents of Terri Schiavo (Robert and Mary Schindler) in their efforts to remove Michael Schiavo as their daughter’s guardian.
Should Shames have recused himself entirely? Practical ethics say you can bet your backside on that. Should he have entertained Schiavo’s petition in 1998? Considering the law of the day, one can only conclude that the answer is no.
From there, Terri’s case grows exponentially odder and odder.
Carrying on for nearly 7 years, the matter of Terri Schiavo played out in the courts, on the internet and in the hearts and minds of many people across the globe.
In the end, Sixth Judicial Circuit Judge George W. Greer ordered that Michael Schiavo remove all forms of nutrition and hydration from his brain injured wife (though the judge’s only jurisdiction was the matter of the feeding tube) and ordered the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department to thwart any effort by Florida’s social welfare agency (The Department of Children and Families) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement from providing her aid or protective custody. Snipers were positioned upon the rooftops of buildings surrounding the Hospice where Terri lay dying, presumably to bring down anyone interfering with her death process. Armed guards searched her blood family at three separate check-points before they were allowed to see her. Judge Greer ordered that her family would not be allowed to have her to die at home or be able to provide her with the Catholic sacrament of Viaticum (final communion) naturally.
But the Congress interfered?
Examining the history of the Schiavo case is a good exercise in understanding precisely where the privacy issue arose and it had virtually nothing to do with the Congress’s actions, bumbling as they may have seemed. It had everything to do with the state court.
At the end of the day, without rock-solid proof of her wishes and based on laws passed years after her injury, the state court (in this case, Judge Greer) ordered that Terri was simply better off dead. Only hearsay (which is arguably inadmissible in probate proceedings of this nature) was offered as ‘clear and convincing’ evidence of her death wish. Additionally, Terri Schiavo could never have legally consented to what was actually done to her. It simply was never legal, during the years she remained in full capacity and able to make medical treatment decisions, to dehydrate a non-terminal human being to their death. The courts overreached into her life, her desires and, ultimately, her demise.
That’s encroachment if I ever heard of it.
On the other hand, the Congress only entitled her parents to a de novo review of the state court case. Hardly the gross intrusion some fire-spitting columnists have claimed it to be.
I’m a firm believer in privacy and further believe that Terri’s was compromised – not by the Congress, but by the circuit court judge who committed her to a death she could never have legally consented to.
In June, the results of Terri’s autopsy were presented to the public and the media by Pinellas and Pasco County Medical Examiner, Dr. Jon Thogmartin. Through a thorough and deliberate examination of the facts, Thogmartin concluded that nothing in the forensic pathology was inconsistent with a clinical diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. However, he strongly cautioned those in attendance at his presentation that forensic pathology, post-mortem, could neither confirm nor deny a clinical diagnosis. It mattered not to the press, who quickly tapped out articles saying Michael Schiavo had been vindicated.
Of course, that’s not even close to what Thogmartin reported, but why waste time on pesky details like that?
The only important thing to the media was that the public had a mechanism for absolution based on pathology that some neurologists have already found fault with. It’s easier to consider a murder just if you can hold on to the belief that it was the ‘clinically appropriate’ thing to do.
Since killing is never appropriate in a healthcare environment, it leaves one to wonder what relief for privacy and safety patients like Terri Schiavo can expect in the future.
Michael Schiavo also announced that he would publish autopsy images of Terri’s brain some time soon. Perhaps his lawyer, George Felos (who has argued this case as an issue of privacy), might wish to have a word with Mr. Schiavo before that happens.
The final insult would certainly have to be the resting spot where Terri’s ashes were interred. In a quiet place, under a handsome oak and close to a pond that features a dancing fountain, sits a bench and stone marker in her ‘memory’. The marker is emblazoned with “I kept my promise” as a tribute to Michael Schiavo’s determination and certainly not to Terri’s life. It would seem that even in death, she was controlled and encroached upon.
People who don’t bother to read between the lines will continue to accuse the Congress and Florida’s Governor of trespassing upon Terri Schiavo. Those who understand what actually happened see others as the guilty parties.
Don’t get used to me saying this, Mr. Limbaugh, but you were right. We hit rock bottom.
http://www.pamelahennessy.com/blog/
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.