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TALLAHASSEE---Kelly McKibben represented Gov. Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case.
And now the Governor has appointed McKibben to the Brevard County Court to fill the vacancy in the 18th Judicial Circuit created during the 2005 legislative session.
McKibben, 37, of Melbourne, is currently chief legal counsel in District 7 for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) a position she has held since 2003. Prior to that, she served as DCF's deputy chief legal counsel and managing attorney.
When Florida's Department of Children and Families made a surprise entry into the Pinellas County courtroom of probate judge George W. Greer in February during a hearing in the Terri Schiavo case, Greer refused to grant McKibben's request to address the court to announce the agency's intervention into the case.
In February, McKibben and the DCF advised Greer that DCF was conducting an investigation into allegations of abuse, neglect and exploitation involving the neurologically impaired Terri Schiavo who Greer had ordered to die by dehydration and starvation by the removal of her feeding tube.
McKibben and other DCF officials told Greer that the agency wanted a 60-day delay in the case in order to complete their investigation of the abuse allegations which targeted Michael Schiavo but Greer refused, saying that DCF wasn't a party to the action.
After Greer's refusal to grant the delay, DCF and Gov. Bush then attempted to place Terri in protective custody pursuant to state statutes which Greer again blocked. However, apparently McKibben and Bush's lawyers didn't realize that they had missed an opportunity to take custody of the incapacitated woman as for a period of about three hours in late March, there was no judicial impediment prohibiting the state from removing Schiavo from the hospice where she was a patient and reinserting her feeding tube. Due to an existing court rule, once DCF had filed their appeal of Greer's denial, an automatic stay of his court order existed.
But Felos, Schiavo and Greer acted quickly to close that window with Felos requesting that Greer issued another order nullifying the stay which Greer did immediately. McKibben and other attorneys for the state tried to stall the hearing in order to give time for law enforcement officers to go to the hospice and take Terri into custody but Greer issued the order and threatened to have anyone arrested who tried to take the handicapped woman into protective custody, even Gov. Bush.
Terri died on March 31, 13 days after the feeding tube had been removed by order of Greer.
Had Kelly McKibben known the law and moved to take Terri Schiavo into immediate protective custody, perhaps she would be alive today. 12-23-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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