The doc testified in court, that there was no response. That testimony came after the doc's educated contemplation of the matter, not his optomistic, off the cuff comment generated at the spur of the moment during the exam. The cut showing that event was seconds long, out of ~45mins of taping an exam which was focused on obtaining any response. I was also originally misled by that cut, becauseit was presented as typical of the responses given. It was not. It was purely coincidental action, and not a resonse at all. It doesn't matter that all that could be presented was a few secs, out of a 45 min exam. The autopsy proved she was blind. Also, no one can truthfully claim, that she lost that much occipital mass during the brief period she had those feeding tubes removed. Again, she was blind, which proves that there was no response.
Nonsense. Blindness is a clinical finding. It cannot be determined with certainty post-mortem. In the instance Terri was clinically tested by three of the five court-appointed doctors to have some vision (optimum 8" - 12", or up to 18"; she could see the bright shiny balloons from further, as focus didn't matter). Yes, Dr. Cranford was one of them.
The discrepancy between clinical findings and Dr. Nelson's cortical blindness claim was most likely a sampling error.
She didn’t have the feeding tubes removed. Michael did. Judge Greer did. There’s actually a long list of people responsible for removing her feeding tubes. But Terri is not on that list.
The fact that Terri responded several times, as shown on the hours of video tape, proves that she was not PVS. No one claimed that she responded constantly. But you’ve seen the proof that she responded sometimes. It doesn’t matter that she sometimes didn’t respond. Or even that she failed to respond most of the time. The fact that she responded sometimes proves she wasn’t PVS. And don’t tell me that she coincidentally opened her eyes ridiculously wide when he told her to open her eyes. Now, maybe if she had opened her eyes normally, but she didn’t. She deliberately opened her eyes as wide as she could. How often does a person do that? PVS would prevent her from doing that, regardless of any outside stimulation. She wouldn’t be capable of making any purposeful facial expressions. So even it was coincidental that her purposeful facial expression followed the command to make that exact facial expression, it still proves she wasn’t PVS.
There was never any dispute about her blindness. It had already been documented that her vision was reduced to a level of legal blindness. Dehydration wasn’t going to restore her eyesight. The video of her tracking the balloon shows that she had some vision. The doctors who examined her all agreed that she had some vision. Even the doctors who later provided their assistance in killing her agreed she had some eyesight. The autopsy doesn’t prove them all wrong. As a matter of fact, it reinforces Dr. Hammasfahr’s observations.
I should also point out the fact that the videos with Terri responding were played in court. Michael’s lawyer had the volume muted. Judge Greer was blind. So he didn’t see or hear the video taped evidence.
Whoa! How did I miss that? All of the doctors testified that she did respond. Michael's doctors also testified that she was PVS, but they still testified that she responded. One of them testified that his own definition for PVS, which was in conflict with the legal definition used by the State of Florida and the definition used by the American Medical Association, included patients who responded.