Shouldn't Michael Schiavo, the judge who ordered the feeding tube removed, and the hospital that complied with his order be charged with attempted murder and/or malpractice?
He's already stolen all her money. Why can't he just divorce her and give her back to her parents?
quote: Her parents want her - why doesn't Michael divorce her and get away from the situation?
because he said that her wishes were not to be kept alive like this. He says he is simply trying to go along with her wishes.
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He says that, but I don't buy it. I think he must have some vested interest in her not surviving.
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quote: The parents also assert Michael Schiavo's interests are conflicted since he has lived with another woman for at least nine years with whom he has had two children.
*gets pitch fork and torch* I vote we pay Michael a visit.... who's with me...
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What the f***? If the person is living, then killing her is murder. Why on earth is there even a debate about this?
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quote:why doesn't Michael divorce her and get away from the situation?
I believe that there's a pile of money involved, that he'll have to give up if he divorces her.
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It's not so much that he has the money now and has to give it up... if she dies and he is her husband and the beneficiary on her insurance, he gets the money. If she remains on life support, no insurance payout. If he divorces her and then she dies, the insurance money doesn't go to him.
Note: I'm not sure there is an insurance policy... but I think I remember reading that there is. And if there is, that's why he's not divorcing her.
Edit: And I'm pretty sure sndrake has commented extensively on other threads, if you feel like looking around a little.
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Don't forget Michael has a mistress and at least one child with the mistress. I don't know the man, but I wouldn't really be excited to get to either.
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I think I read somewhere that he had already spent nearly all of the money from her malpractice suit on lawyers trying to get her killed. So there must be an insurance policy.
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Or, hey, who knows, maybe he's getting sick of watching the woman he loved, the woman who expressed the wish to never be in the state she's been in for the last 14 years, remain in a coma.
I certainly don't know. Don't know her, Don't know him. But I would suggest that the bastard everyone here is making him out to be would probably have bailed a lot earlier. He didn't petition the court to have her feeding tube removed until 1998, eight years after she entered the coma, two years after a CAT scan revealed massive brain damage. Timeline
I flipped through a lot of websites looking at this, and I still haven't a clue. Either he's a murderous fiend who wants to run off with her insurance money and their property after doing everything he can to kill her, or he's a devoted husband who did everything he could until the doctors told him there was no hope, whereupon he's been working to carry out her wishes. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground at all, and I sure don't know which is the more accurate.
What I do know is that this points out how very important it is to have a living will.
[ January 05, 2005, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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this site has an excellent review of the legal decisions and an FAQ that answers many of the questions here directly from court abstracts -- i.e., what the ruling judge(s) said in their opinions.
Turns out that Michael seemed like a devoted husband to the trial judge.
Anyway, I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that the dogpile on Michael is probably not warranted.
And the court ruled that the "purposeful reactions" that seem to be there on video, etc. aren't repeatable or consistent. Interesting range of viewpoints on this if you ask me. I mean, you've got people going on record saying things like "she should be sitting home eating Christmas dinner with her family" and others saying that if you watch her for any period of time you'll see things that look like recognition but are just as likely to be directed nowhere as they are at any particular person, i.e. the reactions appear "reflexive." I'm not sure if they mean that last in a purely physiological sense, or if they are using common vernacular.
I'm concerned that the woman appears to have little or no cerebral cortext left. If that's really true (and even that is somewhat controversial), I don't see how she could be having anything like a controlled response to anything.
It's pretty clear, though, that she's not IN a coma. She may not have much higher mental processing power left, but she is alert...awake, etc.
poor thing.
I feel for all involved.
Even Michael. If you read why the courts are even involved in that FAQ, I think you might come away with a different impression of the man.
Maybe not. But I didn't get the picture of him as a money-seeking ogre.
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