Judge delays removal of Schiavo's feeding tube

By ANITA KUMAR

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 18, 2001

CLEARWATER -- A Pinellas judge on Friday delayed the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube until 3 p.m. on Oct. 9, more than a month after the deadline that had been set for later this month.

The ruling gives Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, more time to fight to keep their son-in-law, Michael Schiavo, from discontinuing her life support.

Terri Schiavo has spent more than a decade in what some doctors describe as a persistent vegetative state.

The Schindlers will ask the 2nd District Court of Appeal to overturn the decision of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer, who ruled that Mrs. Schiavo should be allowed to die.

Greer presided over the family's emotional trial last year and repeatedly ruled that Mrs. Schiavo would want to die. He also has declined to hold further hearings or allow additional doctors to evaluate Mrs. Schiavo, as her parents requested.

In his order Friday, Greer said he was not convinced the Schindlers have filed the appeal solely to delay the case -- as Michael Schiavo has suggested -- and granted them a delay.

Greer's ruling was the latest legal battle in a nationally publicized family feud that dates to Feb. 25, 1990, when Mrs. Schiavo collapsed from a heart attack in her St. Petersburg home and was deprived of oxygen for five minutes.

Mrs. Schiavo's doctors say that she is unaware of what is happening around her and that her motions and sounds are based on reflex only.

But the Schindlers dispute that, saying that she turns her head toward her mother, laughs at jokes and can swallow ice water. They claim new medical treatments are available to possibly help Mrs. Schiavo, such as putting her into an oxygen chamber.

The Schindlers and Schiavo have accused each other of trying to control Mrs. Schiavo's fate to get $700,000 she received from a 1992 malpractice suit. Only about half of that remains; much of it has been used to pay for Schiavo's legal expenses and Mrs. Schiavo's medical care.

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