Text 10937, 132 rader
Skriven 2005-04-02 17:33:20 av Ed Connell (1:379/1.6)
  Kommentar till text 10866 av EARL CROASMUN (1:275/311)
Ärende: Re: Bo Gritz
====================
Hey, EARL.

 EC> -> No.  The judge ordered her death.

 EC> On February 11, 2000, the Florida legal system announced a
 EC> determination (based on a lengthy hearing with extensive testimony and
 EC> presentation of medical evidence) as to what her expressed intentions
 EC> were.  Everything that has transpired in the five years since that
 EC> ruling has been based on that finding.  The judge did not order her
 EC> death.

What I saw said that the judge ordered that her feeding tube be removed and 
that she get no food or water until she was dead.  That I call ordering her 
death.

 ECIf you want to phrase it in those terms, she ordered
 EC> her death.  They were obligated by law to carry out her wish.

I only asked that this be reevaluated.

 EC> You may
 EC> think that the judge made an error in assessing the strength of the
 EC> evidence.  I think it was a close thing, and had I been the judge I
 EC> very likely might have found that the evidence was NOT "clear and
 EC> convincing."  But the laws of Florida selected him and gave him that
 EC> power.  He had no stake in the case.  He made the call that he felt was
 EC> proper.  And every appeal of that decision has been rejected.  There is
 EC> no reasonable sense in which one could say that the judge "ordered her
 EC> death."

But he did.  I'm not a lawyer, and I don't look at things the same way you 
obviously do.  When a judge makes a ruling that must be obeyed, and the 
result is her death, then I say the judge ordered her death.

Now, you say it was a close thing.  If it is close, then there is danger of 
error.  In that case, I prefer to risk the error on the side of life.  This 
closeness is just one more reason the case should have been looked at on the 
federal level.

 EC> -> It is not clear to me that she wanted to die.

 EC> After reading the summary of the hearing, I think it was a tough call.

As I said before, in that case, I vote for life.

 EC> But most of the discussion here in the last two weeks seems premised on
 EC> the assumption that the husband wanted her to die and therefore the
 EC> judge ordered that she die.  That ignored the most central point of the
 EC> whole thing: the determination of HER intent.  Neither Michael nor the
 EC> judge had any legal power to remove the tube on their own.  In fact, if
 EC> he had stepped down as guardian and turned the role over to her father,
 EC> the father would have been legally OBLIGATED to remove the tube just as
 EC> Michael was legally obligated to do so.  The whole ugly mess would have
 EC> simply been made uglier.

 EC> In fact, earlier in all the legal mess, the parents made it clear that
 EC> they would want life support kept on even if THEY were convinced that
 EC> she wanted it cut off.  I can understand the emotions that would lead
 EC> them to want to do that.  But their wishes do not trump HER wishes.

 EC> After this rambling, I'll try to be more concise here.  A patient can
 EC> make the decision (an adult, healthy, and not under duress at the time
 EC> of the decision) that care should be cut off in some specific
 EC> hypothetical future situation (brain death, PVS, coma, whatever).  They
 EC> can base that decision on their religion, their desire for dignity,
 EC> their concerns for relatives, their fear of living on as a live brain
 EC> trapped in a dead body, whatever they choose.

 EC> If we allow such decisions to be put into effect, there has to be some
 EC> way of determining intent.  Courts and legislatures have developed a
 EC> specific means of doing so.  If someone wants to complain about the
 EC> ruling in the Schiavo case, they should be able to specify what they
 EC> thought was wrong had how it should be fixed.

 EC> I've seen a lot of complaining in this echo, but only two types of
 EC> actual positions for the criticism.  Some posts sound like the poster
 EC> is opposed to the very idea of withholding care regardless of the
 EC> patient's wishes.  I disagree with that position.  Other posts have
 EC> suggested that only WRITTEN wishes should be respected.  Problem is,
 EC> when you get right down to it, sometimes testimony of witnesses, with
 EC> tests of credibility, ability to cross-examine, and so on, can be more
 EC> reliable evidence than a piece of paper that purports to be a contrct
 EC> or a will.  Apart from that, it would be unjust to the vast number of
 EC> people who (like Schiavo and Cruzan) are young and naive enough to
 EC> think that they are fifty years away from needing a living will, as
 EC> well as to those whose written wishes are lost, misplaced, or
 EC> destroyed.

 EC> The legal steps were followed to the letter.  Everyone did what they
 EC> were supposed to do.  If the outcome was wrong, how could it have been
 EC> avoided?

Where a person's very life is at stake, I don't like the view that the 
judicial system is a big machine, and if every i is dotted and every t 
crossed, and the letter of the law is followed then this innocent person 
dies.  It is wrong in my view that when the congress and the president said, 
we are not sure this is right, please make sure, the federal judiciary went 
into their bookkeeping mode and blew off the request.  They should, if these 
are indeed human beings we have sitting in those robes, been willing to do 
everything possible to make sure that what was being done was the right 
thing.  Note, I did not say, to the letter of the law.  I said the right 
thing.  That is all I have ever asked for.

I am incensed that the federal judges had so little humanity that they 
couldn't see this.

Of course I don't go into this thing already at ease with the judges based 
on their making decisions supported by their feeling how the country should 
do things, international opinion, and treaties that have not been ratified 
by the people's representatives.

I know my views sound contradictory, but in one case the judges were setting 
aside the will of the people as expressed through their elected 
representatives and in this case, they were setting aside the unease of the 
people as expressed through their elected representatives.  It appears to me 
that these judges consider the people's views as unworthy of their 
consideration.

I know that the courts most fundamental guide is the constitution.  If the 
people's representatives move in a way that the judges can't find 
constitutional grounds for rejection, then they should act in support of the 
people.

Now the constitution states that no person shall be denied life without due 
process.  Does that mean only that someone has to go through certain 
motions?  Could a jury of twelve honest citizens be convinced that Terry 
should be killed?  It seems to me that the bar is set too low.  It is too 
easy to deprive someone of life.


--- Fidolook Lite FTN stub 
 * Origin: Procrastinate NOW, don't put it off for tomorro (1:379/1.6)