Charles Crist Praises Schiavo Judges for Ending Terri's Life

Florida attorney general Charles Crist praises the judge who signed Terri's execution order.

Excerpts

Two weeks ago, the Republican attorney general and candidate for governor gave a late-night speech to a roomful of lawyers in Miami where he referred to the judges in the Terri Schiavo case as "heroes."

Crist said he was "proud" of both judges.

"You are heroes to all of us, and your defense of the judiciary and what is right is beyond admirable," Crist was quoted in the Daily Business Review, a Miami newspaper that provided the only news account of the July 15 event at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.

Crist's comments have resonated far beyond the Biltmore.

"Judge Greer is a poster child for everything that's wrong with the judiciary," said Gary Cass, executive director of the Center for Reclaiming America, a grass roots Christian political group in Fort Lauderdale that lists "sanctity of life" as one of its priorities and plans to form a political action committee.

"For Charlie Crist to hold that up as an example of good judicial practice concerns me," Cass said. "I think it was a mistake for Charlie to say that. I don't know how anybody can be happy about a woman being deprived food and water."

Read the article here

Brother of Terri Schiavo to speak

Bobby Schindler says he can't even begin to describe what it was like seeing his sister, Terri Schiavo, die.

"It's been extremely difficult to come to terms with the manner in which my sister was killed."

Schindler will be in Wichita on Friday to share some of his family's experiences when they were the focus of national and international media and offer his views on other related topics.

He will be the featured speaker on the opening night of the Midwest Catholic Family Conference, which runs through Aug. 7 at Century II Convention Hall.

Read the article at the The Wichita Eagle

Cardinal says enough of euphemisms—Terri Schiavo was killed

Lima, Jul. 26, 2005 (CNA) - The President of the Pontifical Council for Heath Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, recalled the Terri Schiavo case this week and said “they killed her” by denying her food and hydration.

According to the cardinal, “Food and hydration are never considered medicine.” “To remove them means euthanasia, it means killing, and so this woman was killed by hunger and starvation. Let’s stop with the euphemisms—they killed her,” he stated.

Read the article at Catholic News Agency

Dying man loses legal battle over right to be fed

Comments from Pamela Hennessy: "This is what amazes me: People went ballistic when the Congress tried to intervene on Terri Schiavo's behalf, stating it was a gross encroachment on her personal liberty, privacy and her body. Yet, they don't even flinch when the government encroaches on someone's personal liberty, privacy and body by deciding a person is better off dead as opposed to being treated humanely. How is that not a violation of privacy if the individual has made their desire to live known and clear?"

"It is the worst double standard I've ever seen. Mr. [Leslie] Burke deserves much better than this. After all, it is his personal choice to live. Isn't that what the other side is always arguing anyway - personal choice? Why is it, that when the personal choice involves favoring survival, it's not legitimate?"

Read the report on Leslie Burke here

Terri Schiavo: America's Lost Hope

Terri Schiavo, a woman who collapsed at 26 and suffered severe brain damage, is dead because her husband and our justice system determined that her life wasn't worth living.

...her fate rested on a husband so profoundly devoted to her that he fathered two children with a woman he'd been seeing for years as she lay bed-ridden. Would Terri have wanted her husband to get on with his life? Perhaps, but I doubt she thought his "closure" would come at the expense of her life.

Read Djana Milton's article at New Visions Commentary

Michael Schiavo Sheriff’s Application For Nurse Could Be Prosecutable

New from The Empire Journal

When Michael Schiavo applied for employment with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department in July, 2004, he signed the application certifying that the information he gave was true and complete. It wasn’t.
Michael Schiavo is employed by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office as a nurse in the Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater.



Read the article here

Misdiagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State

This study in the British Medical Journal in 1996 found that 43% of those diagnosed as in a “persistent vegetative state” were actually not, including some who’d had that diagnosis for several year. This other study in Neurology in 1993 found that 37% were misdiagnosed. (Discussion in the BMJ here.)

This is not exactly new information. And the ways the articles describe people as not being in PVS (follow the links) sound like the sort of things Terri does that her detractors call “reflexes.”

There is a list of words nurses have said Terri speaks here.

Source of the article Different River

Pinellas Taxpayers Paid Michael Schiavo To Watch His Wife Die

Michael Schiavo received donated sick time from employees of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office to watch his estranged wife die.

Read the article at The Empire Journal

Judge Who Ordered Terri's Execution Given Award

New from The Empire Journal "AG Crist Keynote Speaker Honoring Schiavo Judges As Jurists Of Year"

Florida Attorney General Charles Crist is the keynote speaker at an awards ceremony honoring Judge George Greer and Judge James Whittemore.

Read the full article at The Empire Journal

Review: Silent Witness – The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death

In Mark Fuhrman’s newest book, Silent Witness, he revisits the Terri Schiavo case from a detective's point of view. Fuhrman proposes a number of possible scenarios that might explain Terri's cardiac arrest in February 1990, and details the legal battles between Terri's parents, the Schindlers, and Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo. While Fuhrman presents some compelling medical and circumstantial theories that Schiavo was responsible for Terri's condition and waged a war with her family out of greed, a pathological need for control, or fear that Terri's recovery might implicate him in something more criminal, I am not convinced that Schiavo is a murderer; nor would a grand jury in Florida likely indict Schiavo with the extant information.

However, I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Michael Schiavo is a platinum card-carrying, malignant narcissist. It’s too late to save Terri, but Fuhrman's book may serve to educate observant readers of the classic modus operandi of this particularly insidious parasite, and someone, somewhere, may escape the innumerable hazards of a relationship with one.

Allow me to reveal the behavioral evidence in Silent Witness of Schiavo's patholog.

Read the rest of Loretta Dillon's post at BlogCritics.org

I Am Michael Schiavo

Excerpts:

Another creepy coincidence: Terri's last name, "Schiavo," means "slave." There was a major figure in the Bible who, it's said, shrugged off divinity's privileges and "took the form of a slave,"—then died hideously, at the hands of a callous ruler, who washed his hands of the case.

When I read about Terri's husband, hear his arrogant interviews with the press, my first reaction is to make like good, dopey St. Peter in the Garden, and decide it's Killer Time, remembering that if Michael Schiavo were to "assume room temperature," Terri's parents would get custody and save her... It's enough to give a guy from Queens some crazy thoughts. Illegal thoughts. Best to banish such notions of violence by meditating on Jesus's words to Peter, "Put away thy sword. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword." If that doesn't work, think about the prison rape statistics. Best not to go there. Sorry, Terri—you're on your own. Why don't you try calling upon Elijah?

Read John Zmirak's article at Godspy

Thanks for nothing, Bern

by Pamela Hennessy

On July 7, 2005, Pinellas County’s State Attorney, Bernie McCabe made the bold announcement that there was no foul play in the collapse and ensuing brain injury of Terri Schiavo in 1990. No measure of surprise was registered by her supporters or family at Mr. McCabe’s revelation. After all, he stoically had refused to investigate the circumstances of her injuries for a number of years.

Read more of Ms. Hennessy's article here

Law prevents spouses cohabitating with another from making decisions

From Wesley Smith's blog site

New Schiavo-Inspired Law in Louisiana

The first of what I hope will be an outpouring of state laws to prevent future Terri Schiavo cases just passed in Louisiana. This law prevents spouses living with another love interest, or who has been convicted of a violent crime, from making the medical decision to end life-sustaining treatment on behalf of their disabled husband or wife. As readers will recall, Michael Schiavo was allowed to remain as Terri's guardian despite the intense personal conflict of interest of living with another woman and having two children by her.

Law prevents spouses cohabitating with another from making decisions.

A bill preventing husbands and wives living in marriage like settings with someone else from making medical decisions for their disabled spouse was signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Kathleen Blanco.

House Bill 675 was sparked by the late Terri Schiavo, whose Florida case drew national attention because of a dispute between her husband and Schiavo's parents.

The new law excludes spouses from making life-sustaining decisions if he or she "is cohabited with another person in the manner of married persons or who has been convicted of any crime of violence."

State law does not define what a spouse is. Louisiana has a living-will law, which allows residents to spell out what kind of medical treatment they want.

The law also revamps living wills after Aug. 15.

Forms will allow those who use them to specify whether they want food and water as life-sustaining measures. Living wills prepared before Aug. 15 will still be valid.

Schiavo's husband waged a successful legal fight to have Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, which the woman's parents opposed.

She died 13 days later.

Critics of the husband said he lived with and had children with another woman during the last years his wife was comatose.

Read the article here

"It is nothing else but murder"

"Terri has not committed any crime, except the crime of being useless in the eyes of a society that is incapable of appreciating and defending the right to life." - L'Osservatore Romano

"The removal of Terri's feeding tube is real and genuine assassination." - Cardinal Javier Barragan, President Pontifical Council for Health Care

"It is nothing else but murder. This is the unequivocal teaching of the Catholic Church, as it was the teaching of Pope John Paul II...It is an unjust death sentence inflicted in an innocent person." - Cardinal Renato Martino, President Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace

Terri Schiavo's Parents to Speak at National Family Conference

COVINA, Ca., July 11 /Christian Wire Service/ – Bob & Mary Schindler, the parents of Terri Schiavo, the young woman who passed away earlier this year in Florida after her feeding tube was disconnected, will be making a special appearance at the 15th Annual National Catholic Family Conference, July 23-24, 2005 a the Anaheim Convention Center. It will be the Schindler's first trip to California since their ordeal. They will be speaking with Br. Paul O'Donnell, who provided guidance and support to the Schindler family throughout their time of suffering.

The Schindlers will be sharing with thousands of attendees their experience that made news worldwide earlier this year until Terri's death, and their personal faith journey during the battle with the doctors, the Florida Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, who all rejected their pleas to help keep their daughter alive.

They will also speak to the faithful attendees on how to help families avoid going through similar nightmares. Their talk will be followed by attorney Mark Henry, who will present legal preparations that families can make to alleviate these concerns.

Earned Media

Teresa Schindler-Schiavo: The Final Chapter

by Barbara J. Stock

Terri Schindler-Schiavo is in a better place now. Certainly better than the suffering of her last days and hours on this earth. There is little more one can say about her that has not already been said. She deserved better. At least she is finally free of Michael Schiavo. He has no more power over her.

I became nauseated as I listened to George Felos describe Terri’s death over and over in great detail. What is wrong with this man, I wondered. I was listening to the radio, so I couldn’t see him, but it was clear he seemed have gotten a thrill that he was there the moment of her death. Felos’s performance was horrible. Yet, Mr. Felos has quite a fan club of followers who see him as a hero.

Now America has a more sophisticated Dr. Death. His name is George Felos and he isn’t even a doctor. He doesn’t inject anyone with drugs. What he does is seek out people who can’t speak for themselves--who are kept alive by feeding tubes--and takes the legal route in the courts to kill them.

Read the rest of Barbara's article at Chronwatch

'Judicial murder' and Terri Schiavo

By Nat Hentoff
July 11, 2005


While editorials across the nation agreed in chorus that at last, Terri Schiavo will rest in peace, the autopsy report declined such certainty:"It is the policy of this office that no case is ever closed and that all determinations are to be reconsidered upon receipt of credible, new information." Even if no new information surfaces, how Terri Schiavo was put to death is causing many Americans to confront their own death.

Pat Anderson, for a long time the attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents, said the day Terri died of dehydration as ordered by the courts and her husband: "Euthanasia in America now has a name and a face." Dr. Jon Thogmartin's autopsy report made clear that Terri Schiavo was not dying, let alone terminal. As Dr. Carl D'Angio wrote in a June 21 letter in the New York Times: "Her family loved what was left of her and asked only to be permitted to care for her at their own expense. My question is, who or what was better served by her passive execution by water deprivation than by the first alternative?"

Read Nat Nentoff's article at the Washington Times

Paving the Way for Euthanasia

By Cliff Kincaid
July 8, 2005

Much has been said or written about the Terri Schiavo case, but the bottom line is that there was no moral justification for killing her because she had an inherent right to life and there was no clear evidence that she wanted food and water withdrawn. The morally correct course of action would have been to let her family take care of her. Nobody would have been harmed by that. Indeed, as radio host Julian Tepper points out, even if she had wanted to exercise a right to die, the autopsy results showed that she was not in a position to really know what was happening to her. So, therefore, what harm would have been done by letting her family take care of her until she died a natural death?

The clear facts of the case show there was something else at work here. And it is an issue that Bill O'Reilly on the FOX News Channel sometimes raised. As O'Reilly put it, "The medical evidence is just too overwhelming to justify keeping her on life support at taxpayer expense."

Read Cliff Kincaid's article at Accuracy in Media

Ave Maria University creates Terri Schiavo scholarship

The dean of Ave Maria University's undergraduate theology program, Beers was shepherding Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and brother, Bobby Schindler, through a Friday morning announcement that a new scholarship would be set up in Schiavo's name.

Fr. Joseph Fessio said prayers for Terri and the Schindlers on Friday morning by remembering St. Therese, Beers said Friday.

"I'd like to suggest that ... Terri (is) the American 'little flower,'" Beers said, "that by her intercession for us from heaven, that she can really become a patron for the priestly vocation here at Ave Maria (and) throughout the U.S., especially by her example of a saintly death, and the saintly example of her family."

He and his parents want to be a source for families in the same situation they were in, a place where they can find doctors and attorneys willing to take up their pro-life fight.

"We still think it is very important (to) try to change the laws," Bobby Schindler said. No one should be able to walk into a courtroom and "kill someone who is disabled," he said.

Read the article at Naples News

Two of Bernie McCabe’s Top Contributors File Report Declining Schiavo Probe

Two assistant state attorneys working for Bernie McCabe sent a lengthy memo urging McCabe to decline an investigation requested by Gov Jeb Bush into Terri Schiavo's collapse in 1990.

The two attorneys, Doug Crow and Bob Lewis, strongly defend the attorneys who represented Michael Schiavo in the medical malpractice lawsuit. Michael was awarded over $1 million dollars based on the myth that Terri suffered from bulimia. Both Crow and Lewis advise McCabe that Terri's collapse was the result of bulimia. The autopy report ruled it out yet McCabe and his assistant attorneys insist on perpetuating this myth.

Read the full report at The Empire Journal

McCabe Closes Terri Schiavo Investigation

From Pro Life Blogs

The NY Times reports that state attorney Bernie McCabe of Pinellas and Pasco Counties has chosen to close Florida's investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 1990 collapse of Terri Schiavo.

In the new report, Mr. McCabe said that to open a full homicide investigation, there must be some fact or evidence indicating that a criminal act caused the death. He said his review had found none.

David Gibbs, a lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, said the report appeared rushed. Mr. Gibbs noted that the Schindlers had not been interviewed by the state attorney's office. "We had thought they would meet with the family," he said.

Apparently McCabe was satisfied with Michael Schiavo's explanations for the alleged time gap between when his wife collapsed and when he called 911:

"This consistency, coupled with the varying recollections of the precise time offered by other interested parties, lead me to the conclusion that such discrepancies are not indicative of criminal activity and thus not material to any potential investigation," Mr. McCabe wrote [Gov. Jeb] Bush in a letter accompanying the report.

Bush, who has been widely criticized for requesting an investigation responded with a brief statement, "Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed."

The investigation had been ordered after the autopsy report concluded that Terri Schiavo did not collapse due to either a heart condition or an eating disorder. Both were widely accepted "facts" and the latter was used by Michael to motivate a malpractice claim in the early 90s.

The collapse that led to Terri's incapacitation remains a mystery although The Empire Journal asserts that her 1990 blood chemistry and physical state was consistent with strangulation. The Journal quotes a lengthy medical report which concludes,

"Many of Terri’s abnormal labs have a direct cause and effect relationship to extreme physical exertion, skeletal muscle injury, or bone injury. Studies done where they thought there was hepatic involvement were inconclusive. Did they test and check for trauma and domestic violence? We do not know."

Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory explanation for Terri's collapse and it does not appear that there ever will be a conclusive investigation.

What is more unfortunate is that Terri Schiavo was publicly dehydrated to death by order of a U.S. Court at the request of her husband. Any prior crime (if one was committed) pales in comparison to this outrageous event in American history.

Questions, allegations, suspicious, and concerns related to the 1990 collapse have no bearing on the ethical argument against the killing of Terri Schiavo. A finding of criminal activity would not make Terri's death any worse nor would an innocent explanation for Terri's incapacitation in any sense justify what was done to end her life.

Felos Health Clinic

Source Registered Media

The Schiavo Autopsy Results - Media Gets it Wrong

By Cliff Kincaid July 6, 2005

The original attempt [by the mainstream media] was a clumsy effort to convince us that Schiavo wasn't really a human being when she died on March 31.

Read Mr. Kincaid's report at Accuracy in Media

Portrait of a Spiritual Killer: George Felos, in His Own Words

By Benjamin D. Wiker

I don’t believe I have some kind of extraordinary spiritual sense, but something alerted me the very first time I saw George Felos, the lawyer responsible for killing Terri Schiavo: Something is deeply wrong with this man. Very deep, and very wrong.

I had no such spiritual warning on the radar in viewing Michael Schiavo. He looked like the kind of man who could kill his wife. And he did. On March 31, 2005, he successfully starved and dehydrated Terri Schindler Schiavo to death. Cold-blooded murder, but entirely transparent.

Felos exudes a different moral odor than his client, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. He wasn’t just morally wrong; he was creepy. One has the nagging feeling that he represents a more hidden and poisonous evil.

Read the rest at Crisis Magazine

New Florida Hearsay Evidence Law Adversely Affects Disabled

Recently, Florida Gov Jeb Bush quietly signed into law a bill that allows family and friends to end the life of an incompetent person. This new law, which becomes effective on July 1st, allows hearsay statements of a mentally disabled or incapacitated person's statements by family, heirs, even friends to be admissible in court.

Read the article at The Empire Journal

The Day We Hit Rock Bottom

by Pamela Hennessy
- media coordinator for the Terri Schinder Foundation

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.

Read the rest of Ms. Hennessy's excellent article on her blog site

Michael Schiavo's Lawyer: An Oddball

In a stunning profile of George Felos -- the attorney who helped Michael Schiavo put his wife Terri to death -- an author and famed theologian shows the weird side of the crusading right-to-die lawyer.

This is certainly a story the mainstream media ignored.

Writing in Crisis magazine, Benjamin Wiker, co-author of "Architects of the Culture of Death" and a senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, uses Felos' own words to expose his oddball views.

Wiker is no friend of Felos' views. He writes of Terri's Shiavo's death: "Cold blooded murder, sanctioned by the state of Florida, watched by millions. Horrible, but again quite transparent. Michael wanted the money. His wife Terri, had to die for him to get it. And so he hired a 'right-to-die' expert, lawyer George Felos.

"Felos exudes a different moral odor than his client, and I wasn't the only one who noticed. He wasn't just morally wrong; he was creepy. One has the nagging feeling that he represents a more hidden and poisonous evil."

Drawing on Felos' 2002 autobiography "Litigation as Spiritual Practice," Wiker quotes Felos extensively, showing his motivation for fighting to help the sick engage in euthanasia.

Read the rest of the article at NewsMax

Mark Fuhrman: Grand Jury Should Probe Terri Schiavo Case

Famed detective Mark Fuhrman is calling for a grand jury probe of the Terri Schiavo case, saying there's no other way to get to the bottom of the unexplained 1990 collapse of the then-26-year-old woman.

"I want a grand jury investigation," he told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity on Tuesday, adding that Schiavo's parents also favor the move.

Fuhrman, whose book "Silent Witness" hit bookstores this week, said that if Florida prosecutors decline to convene a grand jury probe, the Justice Department should step in.

He asked, "Were Terri's civil rights violated? When I looked at this case, she never got the due process of a death row inmate."

A similar investigative book by Fuhrman, "Murder in Greenwich," is credited with forcing Connecticut prosecutors to re-examine the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley, resulting in the conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel.

In the Terri Schiavo case, Fuhrman said most of the questions revolve around her husband, Michael, and the conflicting stories he's told over the years.

"Michael Schiavo can't seem to remember anything consistently," he told Hannity, citing discrepancies in Michael's account of his reaction to his wife's collapse and the time he called paramedics.

"We have to have Michael Schiavo sit in front of a grand jury," the famed detective urged, noting that Schiavo has refused over the years to be questioned under oath in a deposition. "[A grand jury] is the only way to investigate this case."

Asked if he'd ever seen a case with so many unanswered questions, Fuhrman told Hannity: "Yeah, it's called Martha Moxley."

NewsMax

Michael Schiavo -- Inventing Reality on a Grave Marker

By Albert Mohler

The tragic saga of the late Terri Schiavo just never ceases to be a cause of moral depression. The latest development is the revelation that Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, has placed a marker over Terri's grave that, to put it mildly, invents a new postmodern version of truth.

The marker, made to Mr. Schiavo's instructions, claims that Terri Schiavo "Departed this Earth" on February 25, 1990 -- the date of her catastrophic brain injury. On another line the marker claims that Terri was "at peace" on March 31, 2005. In other words, Michael Schiavo now claims that Terri "died" in 1990, but was not allowed to be "at peace" until fifteen years later.

This is both medical and moral nonsense. Terri Schiavo's death certificate lists March 31, 2005 as her date of death. Until then, she was not brain dead, nor was she legally or medically dead.

Furthermore, this claim is inconsistent, to say the least, with what Michael Schiavo claimed during the course of his medical malpractice lawsuit related to Terri's injury. In 1992, Mr. Schiavo stated, "I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her." As Charlotte Allen points out, this is strange language (note the present tense) from someone who supposedly believed that his wife had already been dead for some time. But, then again, that was then and this is now. This grave marker reveals the mentality that has been driving Michael Schiavo throughout his determined and successful battle to bring Terri's life to an end.

www.AlbertMohler.com