PINELLAS PARK, Fla., March 25 -- The parents of Terri Schiavo took what one of their attorneys called their "final shot" on Friday, arguing that the brain-damaged woman tried to say "I want to live" minutes before her feeding tube was removed March 18.
The surprise tactic stirred emotions on yet another day of courtroom decisions, including a ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which Friday night rejected a request to resume Schiavo's feeding. Hours before the ruling, Schiavo's father, Robert Schindler, with red-rimmed eyes and a weary gaze, said his daughter "is down to her last hours" and added: "Something has to be done, and it has to be done quick."
Robert Schindler, the father of Terri Schiavo, talks to reporters outside the Woodside Hospice. Efforts to get her feeding tube reinserted have been in vain.
(Carlos Barria -- Reuters)
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Friday night, Schindler and his wife, Mary, pleaded on television for Gov. Jeb Bush (R) to intervene. "With the stroke of his pen, he could stop this," Robert Schindler said. "He's put Terri through a week of hell and my family though a week of hell. I implore him to put a stop to this. He has to stop it. This is judicial homicide."
The assertions that Schiavo was trying to talk were disputed by attorneys for Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, who accused the Schindlers' legal team of "crossing the line" and questioned why the assertion had not been raised during the hours of impassioned courtroom arguments over the past week.
"This was our last motion," said Barbara Weller, one of the Schindlers' attorneys. "We figured we go for broke."
Weller -- who said in an interview Friday night that she told reporters about Schiavo trying to speak but was mostly ignored -- was both attorney and witness on Friday. She offered an affidavit that said Schiavo responded after she begged her to say, "I want to live." The brain-damaged woman struggled to answer, saying "AHHH" and "WAAA" before becoming agitated and giving up, Weller wrote. The assertion contradicts the diagnoses of several court-appointed doctors, who have reported that Schiavo is in a vegetative state and have said that people often mistake reflex actions, such as moaning, for true cognitive activity.
Judge George W. Greer, the Pinellas County judge whom some protesters have labeled "a judicial murderer" for deciding against the Schindlers previously, said he would issue a ruling Saturday on whether Weller's claims are enough to require a resumption of Schiavo's tube-feeding. Earlier Friday, a federal judge in Tampa refused to order the tube reinserted, saying the Schindlers had not presented enough evidence to support their arguments that Schiavo is an abused disabled person.
Also Friday, the FBI said a North Carolina man, Richard Alan Meywes, was arrested for allegedly placing a $250,000 bounty "on the head of Michael Schiavo" and offering a $50,000 reward to kill the judge who ruled against the Schindlers, though the judge was not identified. Another arrest was made in Seminole, Fla., after police said a man robbed a gun store late Thursday as part of an attempt to "rescue Terri Schiavo."
The generally peaceful pleas of protesters to resume Schiavo's feeding have attracted widespread news coverage, with photographs of the taped mouths of young women and men holding crucifixes on newspaper front pages and cable news. But public opinion, both nationally and in Florida, strongly favors Michael Schiavo -- who says his wife would want the tube removed -- and opposes the law passed by Congress in an extraordinary Palm Sunday session that stretched into Monday. A poll conducted for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Florida Times-Union showed that nearly two out of three Floridians think Congress and President Bush should not have intervened.
The Florida governor, who is the president's brother, is under intense criticism after failing to win court orders from Greer giving the state authority to take custody of Schiavo. Gov. Bush "must act and he must act immediately on her behalf," D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries said in a statement Friday. "He must disregard the order of Judge Greer."
Protest leaders also circulated five written legal opinions that they said prove Gov. Bush still has authority to take Schiavo from the Woodside Hospice. A poster in the thicket of signs outside the hospice read: "Gov. Bush, please! Stay the execution." The governor has said repeatedly that he would do whatever he could to save Schiavo, but he has stressed in recent interviews that he will not violate court orders.
The legal options for the Schindlers are slim after more than seven years of courtroom wrangling. They had hoped a new tack would budge U.S. District Judge James D. Whittemore in Tampa, who had ruled against them earlier this week. But the judge issued a ruling early Friday that eviscerated their claims that the hospice where Schiavo lies behind a guarded door violated her rights as disabled person and prevented her from receiving proper rehabilitative care.
Whittemore also ruled against their contention that Judge Greer and Michael Schiavo, who is Terri Schiavo's guardian, violated her Eighth Amendment rights by subjecting her to "cruel and unusual punishment." Schiavo "is not being 'detained' by the state at the hospice," he said.
Whittemore's ruling, for all its sharp denunciations of the Schindler attorney's legal arguments, also carried a hint of emotion.
"The court would be remiss," Whittemore wrote, "if it did not once again convey its appreciation for the difficulties and heartbreak the parties have endured throughout this lengthy process."
