Innocents sentenced to death while illegal alien rapist get due process

Linda Chavez contrasts Terri’s plight with that of an illegal alien who was sentenced to death for rape of two teenage girls in 1992.

In both cases, lower courts had already ordered the termination of life — in the case of Terri Schiavo, by refusing her food and water on the basis of a Florida state court ruling; and in the case of Jose Ernesto Medellin, by the judgment of a Texas jury that he was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” of the rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1992.

So, why did the Court give so much more deference to Medellin’s claims than to Schiavo’s? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it is because many people — including the judges who have considered her case — believe that Terry Schiavo’s disabilities render her no longer fully human. And in this judgment the medical establishment is fully complicit. The very term used to describe Schiavo’s condition — persistent vegetative state — conjures up images of a subhuman, sub-animal life form. As one health care professional wrote me after hearing me on television describe the pain Schiavo might suffer as she slowly dehydrated to death, “If you touch a venus fly trap plant (a stimuli) it will immediately close its petals (a reaction). That doesn’t mean it feels or cognizes [sic] that there is a fly that has landed.” Few public commentators have been as blunt, but the sentiment seeps through nonetheless in the words we choose to describe Schiavo’s state.

Although the media has tried endlessly to compare Schiavo’s predicament to that of cancer or Alzheimer’s patients whose families choose to withhold or withdraw life-support at the end of their lives, Schiavo was not dying — at least not until a judge ordered that she not be fed or given water. She required no machines to help her breathe, no kidney dialysis to remove toxins from her body, no pacemaker to regulate her heartbeat. She was even able to swallow on her own — she swallowed two liters of saliva every day, until severe hydration turned her mouth and tongue to dry leather — which raises the possibility that she may not even have required the feeding tube that the judge ordered removed. Until her court-ordered ordeal, she was a relatively healthy, if severely brain damaged woman whose longevity alone was testament to a will to live.