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The Terri Schiavo Case: Flat Lining Liberal Arguments
By N. Beaujon
May 9, 2005
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Terri Schiavo did not die when the Florida Courts and Judge Greer killed her by starvation-dehydration, her issues are still alive- as much as liberals would like to see them aborted. When arguing the Terri Schiavo murder the typical liberal response is a petulant: “All of the courts found for the husband” or “All of the courts that reviewed the case agreed.” Suddenly, liberals have never heard of the “Innocence Project”, their cause d'celbre Mumia Abu-Jamal or the ACLU.
This may be the first case when a death sentence, meted out by the State, meets with their stamp of approval. If you click onto any anti-death penalty site they will list hundreds of cases of “wrongful conviction” . Those are buzz words for “the courts got it wrong.” Liberals will speechify for hours on how the appellate courts will only look at the law not at the facts so, if a lower court judge made a faulty determination it will go undiscovered. Liberals fall back on every argument to derail the supposed, iron clad findings of the convicting court: The jury was biased, the judge was a slouch, counsel was incompetent, witnesses were blind, mistaken or, worse, but none of these “appellate issues” apply to Terri Schiavo. In the case of Black Panther Party activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, for example, with his 20 years of appeals, the courts got it all wrong. But, suddenly, a lowly probate court judge who found "clear and convincing" evidence that Terri wanted to die, on the basis of the hearsay testimony of her adulterous, polygamous "husband", delivered 5 year after the original facts, who had an obvious conflict of interest, is right on the mark. This new found respect for the law is downright incredible (as in "not credible" at all.)
The other “persuasive” missive they’ll fire back is rank with their “privacy rights” pabulum. One argument on a popular message board pretty much personifies the anti-Terri lobby: “All the Terri crap. It was nobody's business to start with, and now it's sure as hell not our business. America isn't some psycho [place] where people get to stick their noses in others private lives!” [Emphasis in the original.] Excuse me but I think that's the same argument we used to have for abused children, battered spouses, cruelty to animals, spousal rape and I’m sure, in all Islamic Nation's, “honor killings”. (Sigh.) Whatever happened to "it takes a village"? If you're a member of the party of eugenics, excuse me the Democrats, you're right, sentancing a woman to death by starvation and dehydration is just a "privacy thing”, right up there with partial-birth abortion.
However, once again, liberals get hoisted on their own rhetorical petards. Why? Because their legal logic is “convenient”, their moral arguments are expedient and their constitutional justifications are, as always, specious.
The Terri Schiavo case was never about state interference in a fully informed Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order from a dying patient. It was about the judicial mandate to believe the words of a self-interested, biased, and, quite possibly, criminally complicit "husband" who pulled the plug on his wife only after winning a million dollar judgment made on the argument that the job was to keep her alive and provide for her life-long care. It was about flawed testimony made by a man who had already “moved on” in his life and had no more claim to his wife’s safe keeping than a wolf guarding a hen house. It was about a fiduciary with an obvious conflict of interest. Dr. Charles Krauthammer had it right when he stated that when a person has become infirm and unable to make his or her wishes known, a spouse with an obvious conflict of interest should not be the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to pulling the plug.
The only good news to come out of this case is that Mark Furman, the ex- LAPD detective of O.J. Simpson fame, who broke the Martha Moxley case and sent Michael Skakel to jail is about to write a book on the case. According to newmax.com, Mark Furman is probing the Terri Schiavo forced starvation case. "He spent a month on the ground in Tampa," revealed Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity Friday night. "He's talked to many of the principals involved investigating the case and he's coming out with a book."
Hannity said he personally contacted Fuhrman in March to suggest he probe a myriad of unresolved questions about Ms. Schiavo's condition, including a 1991 bone scan report showing that Schiavo suffered fractures sometime prior to being found unconscious in her home in Feb. 1990. Schiavo's family has repeatedly said they suspect Terri's condition was the result of a violent fight she had with her husband Michael. Police never probed the case for evidence of assault because by the time the bone scan became public in 2002, the statute of limitations had run.
Det. Fuhrman's investigation would be the first to review the case for evidence of a possible crime. "All I can say," the talk host told his "Hannity & Colmes" audience, "is that this is not over. Stay tuned."
And it isn't over. Maybe this time, on the basis of the evidence unearthed against Michael Schiavo, the criminal courts will get it right. It seems that a lot of us believe that the court sanctioned murder of an innocent person isn't a “private affair” at all.
