Florida AG: No Crime in Schiavo Case
At the recommendation state attorney Bernie McCabe, Florida Governor Jeb Bush has ended the probe into Terri Schiavo’s collapse, concluding there is no evidence it was caused by a criminal act on the part of Michael Schiavo or anyone else. McCabe added that he thought the most likely explanation of Terri’s collapse was an eating disorder, while conveniently neglecting to mention (or, perhaps, while inconveniently having the Ass. Press leave that part of his quote out of the story) that Jon Thogmartin’s autopsy didn’t exactly bear that theory out, either. In the end, there is no evidence - and, in all likelihood, never will be - that Terri Schiavo’s death was caused by an act of violence, by an eating disorder, or by anything else. Given that, I guess there’s no real evidence she died at all. I think everyone on either side of the Schiavo controversy who has accused her of being dead owes her a big fat apology, but those crazy pro-Schiavo/anti-Schiavo/pro-Schiavo-but-I-mean-the-other-Schiavo activists will never do that, so maybe it’s time to let the Schiavo matter drop once and for all.
It’s not, however, time to drop the underlying issue: the law in Florida (and God knows how many other states) says that if you are incapacitated, you can be starved to death without an advance written directive as long as one judge who has never even met you becomes “clearly convinced” you would have wanted it that way. That’s insane. The law should be changed yesterday, or in the regular session, when no high-profile case is on anybody’s radar, and legislators are free to debate the niceties of a model law to their hearts’ content. Those are the conditions where good laws can be written, even if they seldom are. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s going to happen. Instead, politicians on both sides of the aisle are going to drop the issue like a hot potato, and do nothing until the next Terri Schiavo comes around.
