After the efforts of Congress to get the Terri Schiavo’s parents a new day in court, another judge has dealt a terrible blow by denying an emergency order to keep feeding her. Congress acted because it felt that her parents hadn’t gotten a fair shake in the state courts; the judge ruled that because the state courts had spent years mishandling the case, that was good enough for him. This is just one more example of why I no longer respect our legal system. The criminal system is a game of roulette that pretty much defines capricious and arbitrary, and the civil system is out and out extortion. The judiciary as a group seems to this poorly informed observer to be a combination of stupid, smug, and arrogant. Yes, there are good judges, but they are being overwhelmed by the lousiness of the rest.
I have to say, I’m not wild about passing a law to cover a specific situation like this. I suppose the problem is that on the one hand its poor process trying to fix bad judging, and on the other its a woman’s life at stake. We don’t have consistancy — we don’t want to execute mentally defective people who are criminals, but it’s peachy to starve someone if they are guilty of nothing more than being inconvenient. We have very clear rules on how to pass on a dead person’s property, but we can pass someone on because her husband, who has some clear conflict of interests, wants to say goodbye. It should be simple — in the absence of clear written instructions, nobody should be denied food and water or even medical care for that matter. If you don’t want to live past a certain level of ability, write it down, notarize it, and let people know. Otherwise, you get to hang on.
We allow executive clemency to handle situations the courts either got wrong or handled poorly in the first place for criminal cases, but not in a case like this. Jeb Bush could pardon someone he thought was wrongly convicted of a crime in Florida, but he can’t keep Terri Schiavo off her own death row. George Bush could do the same for someone convicted in Federal Court, but his hands are tied the same in this case. Frankly, I don’t see a lot of difference between executive clemency and Congressional clemency, which is what the law they passed represents. They are both Deus Ex Machina, and the only defense is that they are used to help the innocent.
Tom Maguire covers the subject like a rug, with coverage of the basic issues of the situation, the media bias on display (with a special shoutout for the NYT), and why this isn’t a case of Right-To-Life hypocrisy. Where does he find the time?
