Schiavo’s parents fail in court

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. – Terri Schiavo’s parents failed Saturday in what could mark the end of their exhaustive legal struggle to keep their daughter alive: A state judge and the Florida Supreme Court dismissed their claim that she uttered the sounds “ahhhh” and “waaaa” in an attempt to shout, “I want to live.”

The feeding tube that has sustained the severely brain-damaged woman for 15 years was removed nine days ago.

“I would hope that the parents’ side realize that any further legal action is going to be futile,” said George J. Felos, the lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s husband, Michael. “We can understand their desperate efforts in this case. But I would hope that at some point, they would leave that behind and try to cope with this on a more personal level.”

For seven years, the family has argued the case in state and federal courts, including appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

David C. Gibbs III, lawyer for Robert and Mary Schindler, Schiavo’s parents, could not be reached Saturday evening to comment on what options he had after the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court.

Schiavo’s husband, Michael, has said she would not want to be kept alive artificially. The Schindlers believe their daughter could improve and say she laughs, cries, responds to them and tries to talk.

Barbara Weller, an attorney with Gibbs’s firm, said Terri cried when her mother hugged her Saturday night. “She knows what’s going on. She was trying to vocalize something with Mary.”

“The governor should know that Terri still knows who her mother is, and she’s extremely distressed,” Weller said. “She’s not a vegetable who doesn’t know what is happening.”

Earlier in the day, Gibbs said the federal appeals made possible by the legislation passed by Congress a week ago had been exhausted. “There is nothing that can be brought back to the court federally that will in any way help Terri,” Gibbs said.

On Saturday evening, a spokesman for the Schindlers made a public appeal to Gov. Jeb Bush to prevent Schiavo’s death.

“Governor Bush, you do have the authority to stop the killing of Terri Schiavo within your executive office,” Brother Paul O’Donnell, a Franciscan friar, said in a televised statement. O’Donnell also alluded to Schiavo’s purported attempt to oppose her death, which her sister and a lawyer said they witnessed.

“Terri’s declaration last week when she tried with all her might to say ‘I want to live’ trumps everything that has preceded in court,” the friar said.

“That declaration calls for you to take her into protective custody and save Terri,” O’Donnell said, addressing Gov. Bush.

Bush, the president’s brother, has said he has done everything within his powers as governor to keep Terri Schiavo alive.

In refusing the Schindlers’ latest petition to have their daughter’s feeding tube reconnected, state circuit Judge George W. Greer said Saturday that evidence at a previous trial had shown that Schiavo sometimes responded to stimuli with “limited vocalization.” “Credible medical evidence,” Greer said, held that such sounds were no more voluntary than the action of a “person jerking his/her hand off a hot stove long before he/she has thought about it.”

Gibbs immediately appealed Greer’s ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. But the judges in Tallahassee, who two days before had dismissed another petition from the Schindlers, refused to take the new case Saturday evening, saying they did not have jurisdiction.

It was the latest in more than a score of reversals in state and federal court for the Schindlers, who maintain that their daughter wants to live and could be helped by therapy. On March 18, under a court order from Greer, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was disconnected. Though she left no written living will, the judge agreed with Michael Schiavo, the husband, that she would have not wished to be kept alive through artificial feeding.

Terri Schiavo suffered massive brain damage 15 years ago, when a chemical imbalance in her blood caused a heart attack and halted her breathing for about five minutes. She can breathe on her own, but cannot eat or drink. According to testimony from neurologists, her cerebral cortex, the center of the human brain that determines knowledge and feelings, has been destroyed.