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Dawgzilla
(69.180.45.217) on 3/24/2005 - 5:44 p.m. says: ( 3 views
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"That's a lot of questions, and...."
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I agree that it is the area of the case that most people find disturbing.
First, yes, the Judge had to find Terri's declaration of intent via clear and convincing evidence, with the presumption being she had not declared any type of intent.
Now, here is where you get into the area of second-guessing a judge when we don't have access to all the evidence. Michael Schiavo testified on the stand that when they went to a funeral for a grandmother who had been kept on life support for several years his wife told him that she would not want to have her life prolonged in that manner. The judge found him extremely credible. Obviously he went into more detail than that on the stand, and he had to withstand a battery of cross-examination from the Schindler's attorneys. Judge Greer gave us no other details other than that he found Michael to be sincere and credible.
Next, the Judge had the deposition testimony of Michael's brother and his brother's wife who testified about two different occaisions when Terri made similar statements. The deposition testimony was, of course, complete with cross-examination from the Schindler's attorneys, and the judge also found that credible.
There was no evidence conflicting with this testimony (a little more on this below). The only way these facts could have been disregarded by the court would be if the judge doubted their credibility, and he did not.
The "clear and convincing" standard sounds nice and all, but when that is the only evidence you have at to go by, then I suppose the clear and convincing standard would be easily met.
You raised plenty of other legitimate issues about this testimony. When Terri said these things, was she talking about feeding tubes, or just ventilators? Was she talking about being in a coma, or did she include things like lack of cognitive ability? She was only 25, so it doesn't seem likely that she was making a "living will" type decision with these statements.
I cannot answer these questions, other than to say two things: 1) The transcripts are not available, so I don't know if these types of details were covered at the trial; and 2) It doesn't appear that the legal standard in Florida actually requires such details...just an oral declartion of a desire to not be on life support.
Now, as for the evidence presented by the Schindlers. Mrs. Schindler and one of her friends testified that when she was younger (10 or so in one instance, and around 20 in the other), Terri saw other families caught in these "right to die" cases and said something like "They should just let that girl live". The judge found 3 problems with this testimony: 1) The two women contradicted themselves and gave weak explanations for their contradictions and generally did not seem credible; 2) These events took place when Terri was much younger; and 3) In these circumstances Terri was talking about OTHER patients, and not talking about what she would want for herself.
So, I think the judge was faced with contrived and mostly irrelevant evidence on one side, and credible and legally sufficient evidence on the other.
Like you, I'm a little uncomfortable with this being 'clear and convincing evidence that Terri made an oral declartion of her intent', but it is hard to argue with the Judge's finding.
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