Terri Schiavo VI

I listened to Hugh Hewitt's radio show on the way home from work, and most of it was about Terri. The things Hugh said revealed why he calls himself, "the voice of reason in the West."

Hugh Hewitt is a professor of constitutional law at Chapman University in addition to being a talk radio host. It's from this perspective that he calmed down a lot of his callers and took others to task when they brought up some of the same issues I raised in my previous posts, particularly the question of the nurse's testimony about the way Michael Schiavo didn't allow proper medical care for Terri. Hugh's point was that this testimony, by not being permitted in court, was not open to cross-examination or rebuttal. We have no way of knowing if it's true. We only have our own gut feel about who to believe.

The important point (actually two) is that 1) Terri gets the feeding tube replaced so she doesn't die before the new trial takes place, and 2) a new trial must occur.

This is the crux of the emergency legislation passed by Congress and signed by President Bush--that there is a new trial that starts over with the fact-finding. Apparently, the way current law is set up, the original trial does the fact-finding, and all other courts must defer to those facts. If the original judge does a poor job of getting both sides of the case and getting to the truth, then the bad factual findings remain with the case forever. This is apparently what happened when Judge Greer first heard the case.

What Congress did is to say that there must be a new trial that starts over gathering testimony and medical evaluations, so the crucial questions can be answered. My list of the kind of questions I'd expect to be addressed in the new trial are:

Is Terri in a persistent vegetative state or not? Can her condition be improved with rehabilitation? Is Michael the appropriate guardian for Terri, considering his starting a new family? Did he provide the kind of care for her that a guardian is expected to provide? Did Terri actually say she didn't want to live as she is now? And is there a way to determine whether she has changed her mind and now wants to stay alive?

All of this will be pointless, however, unless a court orders her feeding tube reinserted until the new trial has been decided. As of this writing, she is still being deprived of nourishment.