The Legalities of the Schiavo Case

Because she was railroaded by the kangaroo trial court, and the federal courts disobeyed the expressed instructions of Congress, Terri Schiavo has been denied due process of law:

Terri Schiavo has been ordered by a state judge to be killed by starvation and dehydration. The order implicates her Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights not to be deprived of life absent due process of law — the courts that have examined this case do not dispute this indisputable point. I believe it is unquestionably the law of the United States — today, already, without any need to change the law for Terri's benefit — that due process mandates that no person may be deprived of life by state action unless every factual predicate legally necessary to validate the state action has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

The main consideration is that an American is being killed by a court order based on fact-finding so palpably unreliable there cannot even be the pretense that the due-process yardstick our country has long demanded in death cases was used. No one contends the Florida court required proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Put another way, if PVS were considered a crime Terri had been indicted for, rather than a condition she is afflicted by, the record in this case would have been laughed out of court five minutes after an appellate tribunal started looking at it. Not because the proof was inadequate, although it surely was. Simply because the wrong standard was used. If a Florida court tried to deprive a person of life based on facts establishing capital murder that had been proved only by clear and convincing evidence, the editorial pages would be teeming with condemnation. Both the ACLU and the death-penalty bar would be lined up for miles outside the Supreme Court in anger over a due-process outrage. And they'd be right.

In the United States, we require proof beyond a reasonable doubt on all facts necessary to the judgment before someone is killed by the machinery of the justice system. Nothing less will do.

Not anymore. Andrew McCarthy sets forth the clear and present danger of this outrage thusly:

As a matter of constitutional due process, this is unacceptable. Indeed, we should be frightened by it, because if here, in a matter literally of life and death, we are losing reasonable doubt — a core protection for Americans against excessive state action — we are sure to lose it in other areas as well.

We don't toss around terms like "judicial tyranny" just to vent, after all. Let the so-called "states' rights" worrywarts chew that one over for a spell. Might give 'em some desperately needed restoration of perspective.

Pity it won't save Terri Schiavo, though. Michael Schiavo's robed hit man has seen to that.