Originally Posted - December 2, 2006

return home

PINELLAS COUNTY---There's another constitutional showdown looming in Florida's Pinellas County between county judges in the Sixth Judicial Circuit and Gov. Jeb Bush.

Tempers are flaring with the judges claiming total autonomy under the guise of judicial independence.

This time although some of the same players are involved, it's not about the alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation of brain damaged Terri Schindler Schiavo (left) by her husband Michael Schiavo (right).

The web of deception in the Schiavo case is becoming more tangled.

This time it's about mentally ill inmates at the Pinellas County Jail, coincidentally where Michael Schiavo is employed as a nursing supervisor.

The power of two of the key players in the showdown is waning with both Gov. Jeb Bush and Judge Crockett Farnell leaving office at the end of the month but the next 30 days may be highly charged.

Judges in the Sixth Circuit Court of Pinellas County need to make up their minds.

When Lucy Hadi (right in photo), secretary of the Department of Children and Families, the state's social services agency, tried to perform the agency's statutorily empowered duties in the case of Terri Schiavo, Judge George W. Greer blocked both her efforts and those of the Gov. Jeb Bush.

Now Greer's judicial compatriot, Judge Crockett Farnell, has found Hadi in contempt and fined her $80,000 for claiming that she didn't do her job by failing to remove mentally ill inmates from the Pinellas County Jail to a state hospital within the specified time frame.

Hadi resigned Friday, a day after Farnell levied the fine against her but she made no mention of it in her resignation letter to Gov. Bush.

Now Farnell, no more than a county court judge who is leaving office at the end of the month, is leveling his sights on Bush, saying that he wants to find Bush in contempt in regard to the inmate issue and levy fines against the Executive Office.

An article appearing in the St. Petersburg Times quotes Farnell has having discussed the issue with the newspaper, reportedly saying that "I need to have somebody to apply the pressure to. I will do whatever I have to do to get these guys some relief".

If Farnell has indeed discussed the ongoing matter with the Times, he may be in violation of Canon 3 of the state's Code of Judicial Conduct which states that a judge is prohibited from making any public comment while a proceeding is pending or impending in any court that might reasonably be expected to affect its outcome of impair its fairness.

In the Schiavo case, Judge George W. Greer and his fellow judges claimed that neither the executive or legislative branches of government could intervene to save the life of the disabled woman. Greer boldly refused to allow DCF to perform its statutory duties in the Schiavo case and threatened both Bush and DCF officials with jail if they tried to invoke the powers given to them under the state Constitution and statutes to take Terri into protective custody.

There was also strong evidence that Greer had conducted improper press conferences and improperly commented on the Schiavo case to reporters from the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune in regard to Gov. Bush's attempts to intervene in the Schiavo case in 2003.
http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/2003/flaffa.pdf

Although Patricia Fields Anderson (left), attorney for Terri's parents, Mary and Bob Schindler (right), filed a motion for the removal of Greer from the case for bias and improperly discussing the case with the press and others, Greer refused to disqualify himself.

After Farnell charged Hadi with seven counts of indirect criminal contempt late last month for failing to transfer mentally ill inmates from the Pinellas County Jail to a state hospital, Farnell's wife, Dee Anna Farnell who is an administrative judge in the Sixth Circuit, heard Bush on the radio accusing Farnell of having a "judicial temper tantrum". Farnell said that if Bush thought his actions were a temper tantrum, then the Governor had led a "very sheltered life.

After Hadi was charged with contempt, DCF said it had found $5 million to fund 85 more beds by mid-December but said that more money was needed to solve the problem. They had allocated another $6.8 million from the 2006 budget in October to fund 87 beds.

Bob Dillinger, Pinellas-Pasco public defender who had pushed the issue to place the mentally ill inmates in facilities where they could receive mental health treatment said that he didn't feel it was Hadi's fault but rather the Governor's for failure to authorize adequate funding.

In October, Farnell had ruled that the social services agency was in contempt for placing mentally ill inmates in jeopardy by failing to comply with state law which requires DCF to transfer mentally ill inmates who have been found to be incompetent to stand trial from county jails to state hospitals within 15 days.

Due to a shortage of beds and funding, some 300 inmates statewide have been waiting more than three months for a bed in mental health facilities.

In late September, Farnell ruled that he would fine DCF $1,000 a day, at the expense of the taxpayer, for each mentally ill inmate who remained in the Pinellas County Jail more than 15 days.

And on Friday, he fined Hadi $80,000 which broke down to between $5,000 and $11,000 each for 10 inmates who have been kept at the Pinellas County jail longer than the 15 days allowed by state law once an inmate has been declared incompetent to stand trial.

An agency spokesman said it would appeal Crockett's ruling. Although Hadi is personally liable for the fine, the spokesman said the state would pay it if the appeal failed.

Hadi still faces the contempt charges. The maximum penalty for each of those counts is five months and 29 days in jail. DCF is scheduled to reappear before Farnell on Dec. 14 for another hearing and Farnell could levy even more sanctions if the inmates still have not been moved.

Bush had been repeatedly renounced by Greer and the Pinellas County Court at the time of the Schiavo case and after Farnell charged Hadi with contempt, Bush lashed back, saying "with all due respect to judges pounding their chest in their big black robes up on top of a big chair looking down and castigating Secretary Hadi, they're not governor. They're not the secretary. They're not the Legislature. There is a separation of powers……I think that some of the temper tantrums that have taken place have gone too far".

But clearly by their public comments, Farnell and Greer believe that they are autocrats and a power unto themselves, answerable to no one. While they claim their arrogance and abuse of power as judicial independence, others label it another exercise of judicial tyranny.

Farnell arrogantly said that Bush "doesn't have a scintilla of knowledge about judicial independence" and "just doesn't want anybody doing what he doesn't want".

Greer, who worked with Farnell in the juvenile division for two years, also spoke out in regard to the pending case in defense of Farnell, seemingly lending grounds for the removal of Farnell from the case for bias and lack of impartiality, perhaps even giving cause to question Farnell's fitness for office, saying that the DCF case "just kind of drove him (Farnell) up the wall. He's a Marine. He's accustomed to things being done that should be done", Greer said, indicating that Farnell and Greer apparently believe that no one, not even the Governor, Congress or the President, should challenge their decisions.

Legal counsel for Bush says that Farnell is out of line and that his actions constitute a "dramatic overreaching by a judge and it is absolutely disappointing he is not even trying to remain objective or appear to remain objective".

Hadi had formally been appointed DCF secretary in December 2004 but had been acting secretary of the social services agency since September 2004 when the previous secretary, Jerry Regier resigned amid questions about how DCF was awarding contracts to university and private contractors.

Reiger had been appointed DCF secretary in August 2002 after the previous secretary, Katherine Kearney who had been a juvenile court judge in Fort Lauderdale, presiding over child abuse and neglect cases, resigned after having admitted that the agency had lost a five-year-old girl in its care for 15 months before it noticed. The girl was never found.

In December 2003, Kearney's law license was suspended for failing to answer a complaint filed by The Florida Bar during her divorce proceedings.

Regier had served as the Oklahoma cabinet secretary for social services for five years, completing his tenure January 2002. He also worked in Washington in social service posts for both President Reagan and the first President Bush, the governor's father. Regier's appointment was highly controversial as he had penned a 1989 essay which said that "biblical spanking that leads to "temporary and superficial bruises or welts do not constitute child abuse". He emphasized that husbands have "final say in any family dispute" and denounced women in the workforce. The essay also said Christians should not marry non-Christians, that divorce is acceptable only when there is adultery or desertion and that wives should view working outside the home as "bondage". The "radical feminist movement," the essay adds, "has damaged the morale of many women and convinced men to relinquish their biblical authority in the home."

Kearney had served as DCF secretary from 1999 until August 2002 and Regier until September 2004. They had headed DCF at the time the nearly 90 complaints of abuse involving Terri Schiavo had been filed and dismissed by DCF.

Hadi had previously served DCF as deputy secretary/chief operating officer from November 2002 to April 2003 while Regier headed the agency.

Hadi had left the DCF in 1993 following a grand jury report which said her actions in a multi-million dollar computer contact scam were improper and wrong.

Hadi's days with DCF were numbered anyway as she had met with the transition team of incoming governor Charlie Crist and had apparently learned that she would not be offered the job of DCF secetary in Crist's administration.

During the Schiavo case, Crist blatantly told the public in a televised statement that there had been no complaints of abuse made to the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) a week after Greer waved a file in the courtroom indicating it was a report by the DCF in the Schiavo case which had been sealed. Crist had lied.

DCF Abuse Investigations - Part I
DCF Abuse Investigations - Part II
DCF Abuse Investigations - Part III

Crist said there were no complaints to his office about the alleged abuse, exploitation and neglect of Terri Schiavo when there is an envelope containing information about alleged abuse in the Schiavo case which was personally handed to him and which was later returned to the complainant without action---but with Charlie Crist's fingerprints. He cannot honestly say that he was not personally made aware of the alleged abuse, neglect and exploitation of Terri Schiavo. And yet he did nothing.

Crist refused to get involved in the Schiavo case, saying the matter was in the courts. In October, 2003, when a federal judge asked Crist to address the question of the constitutionality of Terri's Law, passed by the Florida Legislature to save the life of Terri, Crist said the law was constitutional and one of his assistants filed a court brief in the matter but Crist said he wouldn't get further involved.

He then stood by and let Gov. Jeb Bush be politically vilified by Michael Schiavo supporters and the Democrats for enacting Terri's Law, ruled unconstitutional after he had affirmed it was constitutional.

In late February, 2005, a month before the removal of the feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, DCF had filed a motion to intervene in the Schiavo case, placing the court on notice that it was conducting an investigation into some 30 allegations of abuse, neglect and exploitation in the Schiavo case received by the agency's hotline.

The agency, under the direction of Hadi, was seeking a 60-day stay on Greer's order that allowed estranged husband and guardian Michael Schiavo to remove Terri's feeding tube on March 18.

The agency was statutorily mandated to investigate the allegations and has 60 days to complete its investigation.

In the DCF petition filed with Greer, signed by Michael Will, adult protective services investigator and filed by chief regional legal counsel for DCF Kelly McKibben, DCF cited a 1972 decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeals in Lakeland which held that a trial judge was in error in his failure to allow (an agency) to participate in what was designated to their mandatory function.

McKibben held the position of chief legal counsel in District 7 for DCF from 2003 until she left in 2005. Prior to that, she served as DCF's deputy chief legal counsel and managing attorney at the time the prior complaints of alleged Schiavo abuse had been submitted to DCF.

DCF told Greer that "due to the investigation and the potential need for examination of the alleged victim, surroundings and circumstances as required by law, the DCF is interested, directly and immediately in that part of the guardianship proceeding which calls for the removal of life support because such action would deny DCF's ability to meet its statutory duty".

DCF was statutorily empowered to engage in an emergency protective services intervention, taking the disabled adult into protective custody by removing the vulnerable adult from the premises where housed if DCF has reasonable cause to believe that the disabled person is "likely to incur a risk of death or serious physical injury if…..not immediately removed from the premises. According to the law, if the vulnerable adult's caregiver or guardian is present, the protective investigator must seek his or her consent before the vulnerable adult may be removed form the premises unless the protective investigator suspects that the caregiver or guardian has caused the abuse, neglect or exploitation.

DCF sought an injunction against Michael Schiavo and/or his agents to prevent him from removing the feeding tube until such time as the agency completed its investigation and had asked that the court appoint legal counsel for Terri Schiavo.

"Allegations in abuse reports go to the heart of whether abuse, neglect of exploitation has been perpetrated by the guardian such that any relief afforded by this court to this guardian prior to the conclusion of such investigation would be tragically misplaced", the DCF told the court.

"The termination of the life of Teresa Marie Schiavo would hamper the investigation in abuse, neglect and exploitation allegations, many of which have previously gone on uninvestigated by the governmental agency charged to conduct such investigations, i.e. DCF".

In 2003, several prior caregivers of Terri Schiavo filed sworn affidavits with the court citing alleged abuse of her by Michael Schiavo in the alleged withholding of medical treatment and other allegations but Greer took no action.

DCF secretary Lucy Hadi had indicated a forensic accountant might have been utilized to review the financial records in the Schiavo investigation. Greer had ordered the records sealed and in denying the DCF petition to investigate the allegations of abuse against Schiavo, also curiously and suspiciously refused to allow an investigation into the financial records which have long been a core of contention in the Schiavo case.

Family members and family friends, alarmed at the course of events, had repeatedly tried to file reports with various agencies about the alleged abuse and neglect of Terri but to no avail.

Although DCF investigator Mitch Turner spent time at the hospice reviewing Terri's file after a complaint of abuse had been lodged with DCF in 2003, chief DCF attorney Frank Nagatani, a contributor to Greer's election campaigns, told the family that DCF chiefs in the region had already looked at the case and "simply were not going to get involved".

Kelly McKibben left DCF last year and was appointed a judge in Brevard County by Gov. Bush. Nagatani, while employed as assistant regional legal counsel for DCF, blocked virtually every attempt to investigate documented complaints of alleged abuse of Terri Schiavo.

But despite alleged wrongdoing and cover up in the Schiavo case by Nagatani and DCF officials, no investigation was undertaken by the state Inspector General's office despite mandated requirements to do so.

Although Florida state statutes mandated DCF, upon receipt of a report alleging abuse, neglect or exploitation of a vulnerable adult, to begin within 24 hours a protective investigation of the facts alleged when complaints were filed in the Schiavo case in 2003, Nagatani publicly declared "DCF is not going to get involved in [the Terri Schiavo case] until this is out of the court".

Nagatani is no longer with DCF, having suddenly left DCF in June, 2003 to become chief legal counsel for the Pinellas County Health Department. His departure from DCF came just weeks prior to a review of the Schiavo case by investigators from Florida's Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE investigators were ultimately told by their superiors to shut down any inquiry into the Schiavo case.

After Greer denied DCF's and Bush's petition to investigate the abuse allegations, saying the agency wasn't a party to the Schiavo case, McKibben then failed to take advantage of a three hour window during which DCF and Bush could have taken Terri into protective custody and likely saved her life.

There were indications of other alleged cover ups and wrongdoing in the Schiavo case.

During 2003, a complaint supported with documentation was filed with the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) but the complainant was met with a "runaround and cover-up." He then decided to contact DCF in April, 2004, and provide them with the AHCA complaint numbers.

The complainant says that the deputy inspector general of AHCA told him that there were intra-agency communications between AHCA and DCF involving the Schiavo case, giving further evidence of alleged conspiratorial actions in covering up the alleged abuse and neglect.

When the complainant tried to give DCF his complaint numbers for AHCA, the DCF representative refused to take any information. A DCF supervisor also refused to take the information. The complainant says he then contacted the office of Inspector General at DCF who advised him that DCF was obstructing him as a mandatory reporter and instructed him to file an on-line complaint against the intake person and supervisor. Although it was done, he was never contacted.

DCF staff did not only obstruct the complainant, according to Dan McCall, an IG investigator. McCall says DCF staff stonewalled him in his investigation after he was assigned to determine if DCF was complying with the notification law. He determined there was massive non-compliance with the law. Nagatani left DCF soon after McCall began his inquiry.

While Farnell and Greer are still maintaining they are a power unto themselves, Greer usurped the statutory powers legislatively awarded to DCF as well as the constitutional power of Gov. Jeb Bush by dictating that DCF, Bush and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement could not take Terri Schiavo into protective custody. In that the powers are statutory, it is still unclear why DCF and the Governor even raised the matter in Greer's court as it was understood and expected by even the most unindoctrinated observer to the Schiavo case that Greer would automatically deny any attempt to save the life of Terri Schiavo.

When DCF and Bush unbelievably publicly announced their intent to take the woman into protective custody pursuant to Florida Statutes instead of acting quickly and quietly, Greer imposed an order saying that anyone, including the Governor and/or agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who tried to take the woman into protective custody, would be found in contempt of court. He called upon all sheriffs in the state to help effect the order, ordering that the county sheriffs could stop the state law enforcement agency from performing their duties and a heavy police presence was in place at the Woodside Hospice where Terri resided. Snipers were even reportedly guarding the area surrounding the hospice.

A team of agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement were en route to seize the disabled woman and have her feeding tube reinserted but Pinellas Park Police told them that they would arrest the state agents on order of Greer. The city and local sheriff's department, on orders of a probate court judge, refused to allow the state FDLE agents to perform their statutory duties.

The day previous, unbelievably Hadi and Bush had held a press conference to announce they they were considering taking Terri into protective custody and the prior notice gave Schiavo and his attorneys, as well as officials at Morton Plant Hospital where she would have been taken for the reinsertion of the feeding tube, to ask Greer to block it which he did in an unprecedented move, a county official asserting jurisdiction to stop the Governor and state agency from exercising their powers.

Greer's order forbid DCF from "taking possession of Theresa Marie Schiavo or removing her" from the hospice. He directed "each and every and singular sheriff of the state of Florida" to enforce his order. When DCF officials appealed that order at 8:15 p.m., it created a window of time in which they could have still seized Schiavo as by filing an appeal, DCF had effectively frozen Greer's order. It took Greer nearly three hours to learn of the appeal and when he did, he canceled the automatic stay.

Terri died on March 31, 13 days after all nutrition and hydration, including natural food and water, was removed from her by order of Greer.

After she died, Greer decided that the public had a right to evaluate DCF's actions in the case, but not his, and ordered DCF to release by Monday, April 18, nine confidential reports which summarized 89 alleged previous complaints.

DCF claimed that it had purportedly investigated the complaints filed between 2001 and 2004 but found no evidence that the 41-year-old brain damaged woman was abused, neglected or exploited.

In the Schiavo case, Farnell had granted a motion by estranged husband Michael Schiavo to present any discovery of information in the case by Terri's parents, Mary and Robert Schindler, in November, 2003 after they had filed a lawsuit to remove Schiavo as their incapacitated daughter's guardian. The Schindlers had petitioned the court for Terri's brother, Bobby, to replace Schiavo as her guardian after they obtained information about a bone scan conducted by a radiologist in March 1991 that showed that Terri may have been a victim of physical abuse that led to her collapse and brain injuries. After Schiavo attorney George Felos and the American Civil Liberties Union filed to block all discovery motions by the Schindlers to try and learn new information about how their daughter sustained her injuries, Farnell granted Schiavo's motion without even a hearing. Schiavo's attorneys claimed that granting the Schindlers' motion for discovery would prevent Michael Schiavo access to the courts---never mind that for years Terri Schindler-Schiavo had been denied access to the courts due to the refusal of probate court judge George Greer to appoint independent counsel for the disabled woman as required by law.

It is even doubtful that she was represented by legal counsel in June, 1990, as required by law when Michael Schiavo and his then employer-attorney, Daniel Grieco, petitioned the court for guardianship although Schiavo appears to have intentionally, knowingly and willfully given false statements on his guardianship application given under penalties of perjury, fabricating a college degree that he never received.

Farnell ordered that "none of the parties to this case shall engage in any actions, including discovery, until after Judge George Greer has ruled on the Fourth Motion to Disqualify Judge".

Attorneys representing the Schindlers in the contesting of Schiavo's attempts to end his wife's life by the removal of her feeding tube had filed repeated motions seeking to remove Greer from the case on the basis of bias, prejudice and conflicts of interest as well as violations of guardianship law but Greer steadfastly refused to remove himself, saying that Schindler's motions were "legally insufficient" but without addressing the merits of the issue.

However, less than an hour after he issued the stay, Farnell convened an emergency hearing and reversed himself after Schindler's attorney, Patricia Fields Anderson, argued that the motion to remove Greer from the case should have no bearing on the case to have Schiavo removed from guardianship.

Greer ultimately once again refused to recuse himself in the Schiavo case, refused to remove Schiavo as guardian and executed the death warrant resulting in Terri's death on March 31, 2005, when Schiavo removed her feeding tube on Greer's order.

Anderson said that the attempt by Schiavo's attorneys "to thwart the discovery of important and previously undiscovered evidence speaks volumes. They appear to be scared of the truth coming out".
12-02-06

© 2006 North Country Gazette