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High courts deny Schiavo tube re-insertion

BY TOM BRUNE | WASHINGTON BUREAU

10:52 PM EST, March 24, 2005

WASHINGTON - The emotional, seven-year life-and-death legal battle over brain-damaged Terri Schiavo moved closer to its end Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an extraordinary 11th-hour appeal engineered by Congress and endorsed by the president.

Schiavo, 41, enters her eighth day Friday without sustenance following the rejection by the high court and the denial by the Florida Supreme Court of another bid by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to gain custody of Schiavo to reinsert the feeding tube.

"We believe that effectively ends litigation in this case," said George Felos, attorney for her husband, Michael Schiavo, whose insistence that Schiavo would have wished to die a dignified death has been doggedly challenged by her parents.

Bush and the parents' attorneys, urged on by Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives, continued to seek ways to restore her feeding tube, and a federal judge held a hearing on an amended complaint Thursday evening.

But Felos said those legal efforts, too, are likely to fail as others have in the past seven years of litigation.

"Terri is peaceful. She's resting comfortably. She's dying," Felos said. By most estimates, Schiavo may live for as long as another week, though reports Thursday suggested she was quickly fading.

Her parents, Mary and Bob Schindler, were "very disappointed" by the Supreme Court, said their spiritual adviser, Paul O'Donnell. "Terri's life hangs in the balance," he said. "Their hope is dimming quickly."

In a late-night decision by the Florida Supreme Court, Bush lost his appeal of Judge George Greer's rejection of his request to take custody of Schiavo based on new neglect allegations and a neurologist's finding that she is not in a persistent vegetative state.

Schindler attorney David Gibbs III filed an amended complaint Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Fla., seeking an order to reinsert the feeding tube. Arguments before U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore, who denied the first complaint, went into the evening Thursday.

In the amended complaint, Gibbs asserts that he has new evidence that Terri is not in a permanent vegetative state. And he argues that starvation by withdrawal of the feeding tube violates the federal Americans With Disabilities Act.

But Gibbs' success appeared unlikely to a growing consensus that included Republican congressional leaders who enacted legislation Sunday that let Schiavo's parents file the case in a federal court, and President George W. Bush, who signed it Monday.

The Supreme Court Thursday morning issued a terse denial of Gibbs' appeal.

That left in force Whittemore's ruling that Gibbs was not likely to prove that Florida state courts violated Schiavo's due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

President Bush planned no further efforts to intervene, a spokesman said Thursday.

Frustrated House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who led the fight for the law, complained that the courts "have chosen to ignore the clear intent of Congress."

Felos warned against dragging out the battle: "I hope that the parents do not pursue fruitless legal options to the end. The only way I can contemplate Gov. Bush or state officials taking Terri Schiavo from the hospice is if they abduct her."

Some conservatives urged Gov. Bush Thursday to invoke emergency powers to send a state trooper and welfare worker to seize Schiavo. Greer issued a protective order to prevent it from happening.

"It is frustrating for people to think that I have power that I don't, and not be able to act," Gov. Bush told The Associated Press. "I don't have embedded special powers. I wish I did in this particular case."

Staff writer Andrew Metz contributed to this story, which was supplemented with news service reports.