Schiavo law expires, precedent will live

DYCKMAN E-mail: Click here Archive

TALLAHASSEE - Florida learned three things, none of them comforting, about its political leadership last week.

One helps to explain why House Speaker Johnnie Byrd wants to be in the U.S. Senate. Tallahassee is too small a stadium to contain his boundless demagoguery and contempt for constitutional principles. He needs to play in the same grand arena as Huey Long and Joe McCarthy.

In his own words:

"Our Constitution stands to serve the people, not the people left to serve the Constitution." So said his statement on passage of the bill to "save Terri Schiavo."

By that logic, the Constitution means whatever politicians wish it to mean from moment to moment. Nothing so cynical has been said since the time when President Grover Cleveland refused to support legislation he considered unconstitutional and someone supposedly remarked to him, "What's the Constitution between friends?"

Byrd swore an oath to support, protect and defend the state and federal constitutions he now takes so lightly. Fundamental to both is the principle that no branch of government can interfere with another except as provided by the Constitution. The Legislature and Jeb Bush had no constitutional authority to overturn Circuit Judge George Greer's painstaking finding of fact - repeatedly upheld on appeal - that Terri Schiavo would not have wished what is being done to her now.

Make no mistake: This is mob rule. The mob that in this instance clamored successfully for someone's life - at the expense of her privacy, dignity and personal choice - could as easily have been demanding the death of someone who had been acquitted in the courts.

Florida's Constitution provides only two circumstances in which another branch can overturn judicial results. One is that by two-thirds vote, the Legislature can pass a law, subject to veto, to repeal a procedural rule adopted by the Supreme Court. The other is that the governor, with the consent of two members of the Cabinet, can grant pardons, restore civil rights, remit fines and commute sentences.

This brings us to the second grim lesson, which is the boundless hypocrisy of Jeb Bush. On one hand, he expresses tender concern that the courts may have erred with respect to the wishes of a tragically brain-damaged woman. But on the other, he has sent 14 people to their deaths at the state prison without even a slight sign of regret. He has been so very eager to respect the finality of those judicial decisions that he has yet to recommend clemency in any death case.

Thomas Provenzano was so mentally ill that, as a judge found to be fact, he thought he was Jesus. Bush rationalized that particularly barbaric execution on the ground that Provenzano knew why he was being executed, and so he was sane enough to die. Dan Houser, who dismissed his attorneys, had a documented history of mental problems and very likely exaggerated his confession in order to assure a death sentence. His execution was state-assisted suicide, but when Hauser's closest blood relative, his birth mother, objected, Bush and the courts dismissed them as having no legal standing.

Had the Senate responded to reason the other day, instead of to the political whirlwind that Byrd had let loose, the legislation would have failed. Even the sponsor, Sen. Dan Webster, Byrd's chief rival in the Republican U.S. Senate primary, didn't seem to have his heart into usurping the role of a spouse with the power of the state. Senate President Jim King confessed profound misgivings. "I keep thinking," King said, "what if Terri Schiavo really didn't want this at all? May God have mercy on us all." Republican Sens. Lisa Carlton and J. Alex Villalobos, one a Baptist, the other a Catholic, both of them lawyers, made two of the finest speeches I have heard in the Senate. "We can not and should not sacrifice our oaths as political officers on the altar of political convenience," said Carlton. Said Villalobos, "We're being asked to actually try a case without knowing the facts."

Nothing mattered, not even the clear and present danger to the Death with Dignity Act itself, a law that King had sponsored. Under that law, it happens on countless occasions in Florida hospitals and hospices that terminally ill people slip into comas or consciously refuse food and their wishes are respected. No tubes are forced into them. But for how much longer can that last?

The third lesson: Your living will may soon be worthless. The Schiavo exception expires after 15 days but the precedent is permanent. Any other legislature could decide, as this one did, that it knows better than you what's best for you. Some are already talking of rewriting the law. Sen. Anna Cowin, R-Leesburg, openly called Death with Dignity a political mistake. The "talking points/sound bites" memo distributed in the House implied an intent to stop all "legal dehydration and starvation deaths" and of giving the Legislature "time to assess the flaw in our current law."

So they mean to keep you alive whether you want to be or not. Last week marked the first step. It will not be the last.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright