North Country Gazette



Death By Dehydration Is Murder

Posted on Saturday, 26 of April , 2008 at 8:46 pm

COMMENTARY

By June Maxam

PINELLAS COUNTY, FLA—Last week in Meriden, Conn., two people accused of depriving a 23-month old toddler of fluids for at least a week as a punishment for bed wetting were charged with manslaughter, cruelty to persons and a risk of injury to a minor after the child’s death was ruled a homicide.

A Houston mother was arrested Thursday and charged with felony murder in the death her child five years ago, accused of failing to provide adequate nutrition and hydration to her blind five-year-old son.

The body of the previously unidentified disabled boy who came to be known as “Beloved Doe” was found on March 13, 2003, clad only in a diaper. Officials said the boy weighed between 18 and 28 pounds at the time of his death. He was wrapped in an Afghan-style blanket and stuffed inside a woven bag.

An autopsy revealed he had died of dehydration and malnutrition. He showed no other signs of abuse or injuries. He had a surgical scar on the right side of his neck and two vertical scars on his abdomen, likely from the insertion of a feeding tube.  

Last week in New York State, a 47-year-old Albany woman was indicted by a grand jury on charges of second degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and endangering the welfare of a vulnerable elderly person for not caring for her 78-year-old mother or providing proper sustenance, starving her to death. If convicted she faces up to 15 years in prison. Carol Adams was arrested following a three month investigation which began on Jan. 16 after the Albany Fire Department received a 911 call. When paramedics arrived at the family home, they found Beth Adams, 78, in bed, unresponsive and with no pulse. She was pronounced dead at the scene.Officials said there was little more than condiments in the refrigerator and that the woman had been fed little more than pieces of chocolate doughnuts during the last days of her life.

An autopsy determined the cause of death to be profound malnutrition. The daughter had been living with her mother for some time and was supposed to be taking care of her but according to the indictment, she failed to provide her mother with the “minimal amount of nutrition” needed to survive.

Authorities arrest people in New York, Connecticut and Houston, Texas for failing to provide food and water to the disabled and elderly.

In Florida, they give awards to judges who order the death of the disabled and laud the person who fought a disabled woman’s family for more than 10 years in his quest to kill her and who lied on his guardianship application as “guardian of the year”.

Let’s not forget Jack “Dr. Death” Kevorkian, the Michigan man who was convicted in April 1999 of second degree murder in connection with the 1998 euthanasia death of Thomas Youk, 52, who was afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevorkian fatally injected drugs in Youk, taping the procedure to be later shown on “60 Minutes”. He said it was euthanasia or mercy killing. The jury said it was murder and he served eight years of a 10 to 25 year sentence.

He readily admits that he participated in the assisted suicides of at least 130 people, most of which were not terminally ill.

There’s something wrong in Florida where the dehydration deaths of the elderly and disabled are lauded and sanctioned—even encouraged—by the courts and media. Death by dehydration in other parts of the country is murder.

The injustice in the Terri Schindler-Schiavo death becomes more and more obvious as times goes on.

Why is death by dehydration a crime in other states but not in Florida?

In Florida, the Republican court of Pinellas County judge George Greer ordered the death of a human being by dehydration, not only ordering that her feeding tube be withdrawn but ordering that “the guardian, Michael Schiavo, shall cause the removal of nutrition and hydration, from the ward, Theresa Schiavo, at 1:00 p.m. on Friday, March 18, 2005″.

Greer’s death order didn’t contain the words “artificial life support”; it was to remove ALL nutrition and hydration, including natural intake of food and water, from 41-year-old Terri Schiavo. She wasn’t terminal. In fact, the medical examiner said she was in reasonably good health and would have lived at least another decade.

There was no credible testimony and nothing to legally support Greer’s unlawful order to deny the disabled woman food and water, nor did the order address the ability of Terri Schiavo to swallow and receive food and hydration orally. In fact, the unsubstantiated hearsay testimony of Michael Schiavo and his two family members was legally inadmissible.

Greer’s final order was intended to cause Terri Schiavo’s death by the denial of food and water by any means. And that was illegal. It’s prosecuted as murder in other states.

It was a wrongful death….. gross negligence in view of the fact that neither Schiavo nor Greer would allow new testing for Terri Schiavo…..and also in violation of state statutes.

Under FS Chapter 825.102 (3)(a) “Neglect of an elderly person or disabled adult” means:

1. A caregiver’s failure or omission to provide an elderly person or disabled adult with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain the elderly person’s or disabled adult’s physical and mental health, including, but not limited to, food, nutrition, clothing, shelter, supervision, medicine, and medical services that a prudent person would consider essential for the well-being of the elderly person or disabled adult.

2. Neglect of an elderly person or disabled adult may be based on repeated conduct or on a single incident or omission that results in, or could reasonably be expected to result in, serious physical or psychological injury, or a substantial risk of death, to an elderly person or disabled adult. Under Florida Statutes, a person who willfully or by culpable negligence neglects an elderly person or disabled adult and in so doing causes great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement to the elderly person or disabled adult commits a felony of the second degree.

George Greer aided and abetted the conflicted husband Michael Schiavo who had much to gain in the premeditated murder of his wife and allowed and, in fact, condoned, the neglect of Terri Schiavo, refusing medical testing, refusing therapy and rehabilitation. While other states are arresting and prosecuting people for withholding food and water from human beings, dogs, horses and other animals, Florida is killing people with the stroke of a judge’s pen and claiming, with serious questions surrounding the credibility of Michael Schiavo and his familial witnesses, that Terri wouldn’t want to have lived.

Greer and Schiavo were helped in the coverup of the Terri Schiavo abuse, neglect and judicial homicide by controversial state attorney Bernie McCabe, then Attorney General Charlie Crist who failed to perform his constitutional duty to protect an vulnerable disabled woman; Everett Rice, then Pinellas County sheriff and Guy Tunnell, embattled and disgraced former commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

In Mississippi, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed in 2006 in U.S. District Court against a nursing home for allegedly causing the death of a 74-year old resident by dehydration after the facility “consistently” failed to provide her with sufficient fluids.

That case wasn’t dismissed, it’s now in the settlement stages.

The death of Terri Schindler Schiavo was wrong—legally, medically and morally. The Mississippi legal action could set a precedent for the rest of the country and stop the euthanasia movement of this country in its tracks, ceasing the barbaric, inhumane act of starving and dehydrating people to death.

For over 10 years, Michael Schiavo engaged in a course of conduct to intentionally deny his wife rehabilitative care and therapy and in fact, the evidence exists that on at least two occasions, he ordered that her medical condition not be treated. There’s nothing laudable about withholding medical treatment and killing a disabled woman, especially when there is simply no clear cut evidence of the woman’s wishes.

Terri Schiavo died on March 31, 2005, after her feeding tube was removed by judicial order at the request of her husband. Terri was not terminal, she as not in a coma. She had sustained several brain injuries in suspicious circumstances in 1990. She had left no living will and her estranged, conflicted husband stated that she had indicated to him that she wouldn’t want to be kept alive by artificial means, although at the time she supposedly made the comment, feeding tubes were not considered artificial life support.

Despite her family saying that it would not be Terri’s wish to have all therapy discontinued and her feeding tube removed, the ACLU, Michael Schiavo and his attorney George Felos, who profited handsomely from the trust fund that was supposed to be providing medical care and rehabilitative services for the disabled woman, marched boldly and fervently towards ending Terri’s life, claiming that she would want to die, even in the face of her valiantly struggling to say that she wanted to live.

As a result of his self-serving hearsay testimony, supported by Pinellas County probate court judge George Greer, Schiavo was successful in obtaining a court order for her death, assisted in his efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union despite the fact that she had been denied her constitutional right to counsel, her due process rights and her freedom of religion.

In the Connecticut case, 23-month old Amari Jackson died of dehydration after two “friends” of the family laced glasses in the house with hot sauce to keep the child from drinking. The judge in that case called the allegations “shocking in nature”.

The child’s 20-year-old mother, Sara Hicks, had left her son in the care of two friends because she was ill and was caring for her 8-month-old daughter. She said she that had been speaking with her son by phone frequently and had been dropping off diapers at the house. There was no indication that there were any problems between him and the brother and sister duo, Sharon and Robert Patterson, who were supposed to be caring for the boy. Sharon Patterson had previously lost custody of four children due to drug addiction.

In Houston, Maria Dana Martinez, 30, mother of the little boy known as “Beloved Doe”, was arrested this week in the five year old murder case. A maintenance man had found the emaciated body in a trash bin in March, 2003. The boy’s identity remained a mystery until his father, who had not seen his son in eight years, saw a TV show last Tuesday about the death and recognized his son. The boy’s mother was arrested Thursday and charged with murder.

http://www.unsolved-crimes.com/beloved.html

In 1931, British author Anthony Berkeley Cox, writing under the pseudonym of Francis Iles, penned a murder mystery novel titled “Malice Aforethought”.

The novel related the story of a physician who slowly poisoned his domineering wife to death so he could be with the woman that he loved. It is a classic tale of infatuation, revenge and murder. The work was groundbreaking in that it was the first in the genre to reveal the murderer’s identity at the beginning and allow the reader to see the workings of a criminal mind.

In criminal law, malice aforethought is the element of mens rea, Latin for “guilty mind”. Mens rea is an element of the crime which must accompany the actus reus of death in order to secure a murder conviction.

Legal dictionaries define malice aforethought as the conscious intent to cause death or great bodily harm to another person before a person commits the crime. Such malice is a required element to prove first degree murder. Malice aforethought is a general evil and depraved state of mind in which the person is unconcerned for the lives of others, a depraved indifference to human life.

In his leading textbook on criminal law, “Learning the Law”, Glanville Williams says malice aforethought is a precisely defined legal term that is a term of art of not a term of deception. He says that murder does not require either spite or premeditation. Mercy killing can be murder, Williams says, so can a killing where the intent in conceived “on the instant”.

America witnessed and allowed disabled Terri Schindler Schiavo to be murdered in Florida before the eyes of the world, a capital punishment that civil libertarians would have decried long and loud as being cruel and unusual punishment had a death penalty by dehydration and starvation been imposed by the courts upon a convicted killer rather than a disabled 41-year-old woman. Such a judicial homicide would have been deemed a violation of the 8th Amendment had it been in the criminal courts instead of the biased and prejudiced court of Pinellas County probate court Judge George W. Greer.

It would be and is deemed a murder, a manslaughter, in other states.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/2007/032707MaliceAforethought.html

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/2007/030407CoverupContinues.html

Crimes such as murder are so horrific to society, there are no time restrictions as to when a prosecution for the crime can begin. While there are still unknowns in the Schiavo case, exacerbated because law enforcement and prosecutors have refused to do their job, there are two well-known facts—Terri mysteriously collapsed in 1990, there was an unexplained inordinate delay between the time of her collapse and Michael Schiavo’s call for help and her collapse 18 years ago which ultimately caused her death, not by natural causes, but by homicide.

There is no statute of limitations for murder and death by dehydration in Florida should be prosecuted as it is in New York, Houston and Connecticut. 4-26-08

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Category: Courts, Crime, Disabled, Elder Care, Florida, Government, Health, Nationwide, New York State, Opinion, Police, Schiavo

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