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BOSTON, MASS---Saying that he wasn't being motivated by politics, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney ordered an independent investigation into the state's handling of the abuse case of 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre.
The girl is at the center of a right-to-life case reminiscent of the Terri Schiavo case in Florida.
But unlike the Poutre case, despite allegations of domestic abuse and evidence which Pinellas County Court judge George Greer called "interesting", allegations made by law enforcement special agents including Gov. Jeb Bush's own head of Homeland Security of a possible cover-up by the Pinellas County state attorney's office under Bernie McCabe and sheriff's office under former sheriff Everett Rice, no independent investigation has yet been opened into the Schiavo case.
A legislative committee will also hold hearings on Haleigh's case according to a spokesperson for House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi.
Romney said the investigation would be independent of any review conducted by the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
But while Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida state officials including Attorney General Charlie Crist refused to order a state investigation into the alleged mishandling of the Schiavo case even after bone scans revealed possible domestic abuse of Terri by her husband, Michael Schiavo, Romney has ordered the probe saying that "errors in judgment were made".
Romney is considering running for President in 2008.
He said that he would ask an independent panel to look into the entire Department of Social Services file involving Haleigh to determine if the agency properly handled the case and if they overlooked signs of abuse.
The case arose when Haleigh Poutre's adoptive mother and stepfather were charged with assault and battery after she was hospitalized with serious brain injuries and placed on life support in September. Two weeks later, the adoptive mother was found dead and the Department of Social Services requested the court's permission to disconnect the girl's ventilator and feeding tube. The stepfather, Jason Strickland, asked to be considered the girl's adoptive parent so he could seek to keep her on life support. He also asked the court to open the proceedings and records in Haleigh's life support case. The court denied his requests, and Strickland appealed.
The high court rejected Strickland's argument that he should be considered the girl's de facto parent, according to the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, explaining that the concept of a "de facto parent" is based on the idea that a child would be harmed if a relationship between the child and an adult was severed.
This "presumes that the bond between a child and a de facto parent will be, above all, loving and nurturing," Justice John Greaney wrote for the majority. Strickland, however, offered no evidence that his participation in Haleigh's "life was of a loving or nurturing nature, or even that it was beneficial to the child," particularly since he is accused of inflicting her life-threatening injuries. "To recognize the petitioner as a de facto parent, in order that he may participate in a medical end-of-life decision for the child, is unthinkable in the circumstances of this case and would amount to an illogical and unprincipled perversion of the doctrine," Greaney wrote.
The social services agency took steps last week to remove her from life support, saying that she was in a persistent vegetative state but despite her stepfather's opposition, the Supreme Judicial Court ordered that her feeding tube be removed and that she be removed from a ventilator.
However, the day following the ruling, DSS, the girl's guardian, said her condition had improved and that she was breathing on her own.
At a news conference Monday, Romney said that "one cannot look at the life of Haleigh Poutre without being overwhelmed with sadness. She was not someone who fell through the cracks---doctors and social workers were watching. But errors in judgment were made".
Although DSS commissioner Harry Spence has refused to publicly discuss Haleigh's medical condition, he said that his agency currently has no plans to remove her life support. Spence maintains that his agency has properly handled the case despite there being signs of abuse before the girl was hospitalized in September as a result of the beating. He says health professionals had believed that she was harming herself.
The Supreme Judicial Court had ruled that the public has no right to attend court proceedings or see documents in the case.
Romney said that he was appointing the independent panel because "an individual is a child of God, and this is something that we care very deeply about and that's why were going to focus on this particular case".
According to the Reporters Committee, the high court upheld a lower court order keeping the case secret, cited a state law directing that juvenile care and protection proceedings be closed to the public. Although Massachusetts courts have found a common-law right of access to judicial records and a First Amendment right of access to records in criminal cases, none of those cases involved juvenile court records, Greaney wrote for the four justices who joined the majority.
"The result is unbelievable," said Edward McDonough, one of the attorneys seeking access to the case. "It's all been done behind closed doors -- the government approving the actions of the government when the life of a child is at stake. This is a shocking degree of government secrecy."
Two justices concurred with Greaney, according to the Reporters Committee, but wrote a separate opinion questioning whether a child's life support hearing should be closed simply because it takes place in the context of a care and protection proceeding. Life support cases raise different public issues than care and protection proceedings, they noted.
The public's ability to scrutinize governmental affairs "is especially apt in cases that will result, irreversibly, in a loss of life," Justice Francis Spina wrote in the concurrence. Although the state has a legitimate interest in protecting children from "the stigma that may be associated with having parents who are accused of being unfit," the decision to withdraw life support "focuses not only on the child's health and the best interests of the child, but on whether under the substituted judgment standard the child would, if competent, choose to forgo the use of extraordinary means to sustain life."
"Unlike a care and protection case -- which is closed to the public, a life support case should be open because it "involves no accusation of parental unfitness, remediation of parental unfitness, or stigma associated with parental unfitness that the child will carry with her through life," Spina wrote. "The public is entitled to know that those seeking the orders are not trying to conceal foul play or that the expense of maintaining life is not driving the request."
The concurring justices noted that the issue should be revisited by the legislature since it probably did not anticipate this issue when it passed the law closing care and protection proceedings in 1954.
Court proceedings in the Schiavo case were predominantly opened to the public although Greer sealed many of the court records. 1-24-06
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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