A Life That Matters (9 page)

Prior to the trial, another guardian ad litem was
appointed to investigate the merits of Michael’s guardianship, a man named Richard Pearse. He recommended that Terri’s feeding tube be kept in. He felt that Michael had huge conflicts of interest—the disposition of Terri’s estate, for example—and wondered why Michael had waited seven years to assert her wish to die. In a long document rebutting Pearse’s opinion, Felos filed an objection to the report before the trial started. The report was thrown out. In the ensuing five-year period, Judge Greer acted as Terri’s guardian ad litem.
²
Yet I still believed that in the end no one would allow Terri to be starved to death.

So, untutored, defenseless, as naïve as ever, we appeared unarmed—naked—in Judge Greer’s court. We were to pay for our ignorance.

Michael’s side went first—they were the claimants. Bobby and Suzanne were kept sequestered in the jury room, so they didn’t hear Michael’s testimony or that of any of his witnesses, although we, as the opposite party in the suit, were allowed to listen.

I was the first witness for our side, and I was terrible. I had never been in court before, to say nothing of testifying in a case that was to decide whether my daughter lived or died, so I was extremely nervous. And Felos, who had been so polite during the deposition, attacked savagely. He pointed out discrepancies between my deposition and what I was saying now, minor points that he hammered relentlessly.
He’s trying to make me out a liar
, I thought, and I became more and more defensive, more and more confused.

Pamela Campbell did not object to either his tactics or his questions. Felos kept going after me and going after me, and I knew what I was saying was the truth, but he made it sound as if my testimony were all lies. In my deposition, I had told him that Terri, then aged seventeen or eighteen, was upset over the fact that Karen Ann Quinlan had been taken off life support.
³
At the trial, Felos pounced. He showed me some newspapers.

Q
(Felos): These are . . . pages from the St. Petersburg Independent dated September 13, 1975; September 18, 1975; April 1, 1976 and May 24, 1976, regarding the Karen Ann Quinlan case.

The first one, September 13, 1975, has the headline regarding the case, “Father Asks the Judge to Let His Daughter Die.” What was Terri’s birthday?

A
(Me): 12/3/63.

Q:
December of 1963?

A:
Yes.

Q:
Well, when this headline broke, Terri would have been 11 years old. And she also would have been, in the next headline September 18–September 23, 1975, Your World Today, about the Karen Ann Quinlan case, “To Live or Die,” Terri would have been 11 at that time.

Then I would like to bring your attention to the front page of the St. Pete Times. Terri would have just turned 12 years old, which has on the front page, “Quinlan Has Right to Die,” which is when the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled in favor of the parents to remove the ventilator.

And the last one in May of 1976, again front page of the St. Pete Times, “Quinlan Respirator Turned Off.” Now you mentioned you had these conversations with Terri in response to the Karen Ann Quinlan case as the parents were trying to remove the respirator, but Terri was not 17 or 18 years old at the time, was she?

A:
No.

Q:
At that time, Terri was 11 years old?

A:
Yes.

Q:
Is it your testimony that you had conversations with your 11-year-old daughter regarding artificial—removal of artificial life support?

A:
But the Karen Ann Quinlan case went on for years.

Q:
Ma’am, your testimony was that you had these conversations with your daughter when it was front page in the newspaper, when it was newsworthy, and when the parents were trying to remove the respirator. The respirator was removed in May of 1976, when your daughter was 12.

My question is, are you saying that you had conversations with your daughter, the conversations you alluded to with your daughter, occurred when she was 11 and 12 years old? You have to speak out loud so the court can hear you.

A:
Yes.

Q:
Well now, again,
what
do you say that Theresa said about the Karen Ann Quinlan case to you.

A:
“Just leave her alone.”

Q:
Now I took your deposition last August and on Page 28, Line 1, I asked you, now did you discuss with Terri the issue of whether the respirator should be removed? We were talking about the Karen Ann Quinlan case.

“I really don’t remember. I don’t remember exactly what was said.”

A:
Yes.

Q:
Okay. Was that testimony you gave in your deposition truthful? That you don’t exactly remember what was said?

A:
Yes.

Humiliated and utterly confused, I thought maybe I had gotten it wrong, that Terri wasn’t upset about Karen Ann Quinlan, that it was somebody else.

It turns out that it
was
Karen Ann Quinlan whom Terri was upset about. Quinlan was taken off her respirator on the order of her father, and seven years later, there was a television show on the case that Terri had seen when she was eighteen. But I was so intimidated that my brain stopped working, and Felos could do what he wanted with me.

Bob watched me in agony. “He had you totally confused,” he told me afterward. “You didn’t know what you were saying. I gave Pam Campbell a shot in the ribs and told her to stop Felos from torturing you, but she didn’t.”

Bob’s testimony was a classic case of the accused accusing the accuser. In his deposition, Bob had begun firing questions at Felos. Felos, furious, said, “
I’ll
ask the questions,” and went at Bob with a barrage of hypothetical questions about the conditions under which Bob would allow Terri to die.

Felos brought up the same questions at the trial. “What if Terri had her arms cut off and her legs cut off, would you still want her to live like that?” “What if she had open-heart surgery?” He was trying to box Bob into a corner, trying to get him to admit there would be instances when the right course would be to remove Terri’s feeding tube, but Bob kept insisting that these were hypothetical questions, and he refused to answer them, pointing out that there were seven definitions of the word “hypothetical,” and which one did Felos mean? Judge Greer made Bob answer.

“I was belligerent the whole time,” Bob said later. “I made a fool out of myself doing it. At the trial, I said, ‘If you remember, Felos, I told you that before I’d make any decision like that, I’d have to give it a lot of thought, bring in a team of doctors.’”
⁴

Bobby also spoke for our side:

“Felos’s wife, Constance, did some of the questioning for Michael’s side, Pamela Campbell for ours,” he remembers. “Pamela wanted to establish that Terri and I had a conversation about her desire to divorce Michael. Felos himself stood up and said, ‘Objection. Hearsay evidence.’ And the judge sustained it. And I’m sitting there thinking to myself,
This whole
case
is based on hearsay evidence. Why is there no objection to Michael’s statements about Terri’s alleged death wishes? Clearly that was hearsay evidence.
It was incredible.”

“They kept me till last,” Suzanne says, “and I always think they did that on purpose because Michael didn’t like me. They made me sit outside by myself in that jury room, day after day, saying they were going to call me—but they never did, not until the end of the week.

“I didn’t testify for long, and I don’t remember it all anymore, but Felos started asking me about my ex-husband at the time Terri collapsed. He was trying to make the case that I was jealous about Terri and Michael starting a family. Pam objected, and I remember the judge sustained it, because it was totally irrelevant. I remember thinking,
What does that have to do with anything?
What
did
mean something was whether I knew Terri’s wishes, and of course she had never expressed anything like wanting to die if she was incapacitated—so I said so.”

Our star witness was Terri’s friend Jackie Rhodes.
⁵
Calm, unintimidated by Felos, she testified that Terri was very unhappy in her marriage and wanted to leave Michael.

Jackie talked of the pressure she was under not to say so:

Q
(Pam Campbell): Did you attend the trial in this case? The malpractice trial?

A
(Jackie Rhodes): Yes, I attended the malpractice trial. A few other people from work also attended to tell what kind of person Theresa was and she was a loss to the company, and you know, to her family and friends.

One thing that did occur during the trial, my husband was in the hospital having a heart cauterization and I had to go down there as soon as I left the courtroom, as soon as I testified, and the malpractice attorney followed me down to the pay phone and said to me, you know, it wouldn’t help the case at all if I told them Theresa and Michael were talking about getting a divorce. I turned to him and I said if I’m asked the question and that is the correct answer, that is the answer I’m going to give.

She
was
asked:

Q:
Do you know whether or not Terri specifically was seeking to get a divorce?

A:
She had talked about it on several occasions. As a matter of fact, we had talked about living together, as my husband was very controlling to me and he asked for, my husband asked for a divorce also.
⁶

And she talked about Terri’s condition:

Q:
What were your observations of Terri then?
⁷

A:
Terri always responded when I went to see her. I would come in and say, Terri, it’s Jackie. How are you? I would startle her and I learned not to do that. She would just jump a little bit. Then I would talk to her if I were standing by her bed.

And in talking to her, her eyes would always look at me. There were times that she seemed to be a little tense with her arms up like this. And when I would talk to her and tell her who I was, it seemed as though her arms would relax and move down during our visit.

Q:
Did you notice any other specific reactions or changes in facial expression?

A:
Sometimes it was she would make sounds depending on maybe what I would say to her.

Jackie said that she and Terri had talked about living together after they had separated from their husbands. She described Michael’s controlling nature, about his checking Terri’s odometer, about his belittling Terri in public.

She also swore that Terri and Michael had fought bitterly the day before Terri collapsed. Terri had called her in tears, saying that Michael was furious she had spent so much money on her hair. Jackie asked if Terri wanted her to come over—she was worried because Terri was so upset—but Terri said no, she could handle it alone.

Jackie talked movingly about Terri’s visits to my mother in the nursing home. Jackie would sometimes go with her. They saw many old people hooked up to respirators and other machines; surely this was the time Terri would have talked about ending her own life if she were in that condition, but she did not.

I could back up what Jackie was saying. When Terri and I visited Mom together, she never mentioned any wish to die in similar circumstances. Terri would bring the other patients gifts and flowers.
Her goal was to keep them alive
! I kicked myself for not having said this during my own testimony.
⁸

Jackie’s presence was difficult for me. Here was a passionate, vibrant girl about Terri’s age, a girl who was as good a friend as anyone could have been, as loyal to Terri as Terri would have been to her if their situations had been reversed. But they
weren’t
reversed. Jackie had a full life ahead of her. Terri’s would be limited in her abilities to move and to talk. I didn’t resent Jackie, but I couldn’t help making the comparison.

Michael’s testimony centered on his assertion that Terri had indeed expressed a wish to be taken off life support if she were unable to care for herself. There was nothing surprising here. The surprise came in this exchange:

Q
(George Felos): Mr. Schiavo, you mentioned that your mother passed away. When did that occur?

A
(Michael Schiavo): July 1997.

Q:
Did that experience, at all, affect your decision to bring this petition?

A:
My mother gave me a gift when she was dying. We stopped her feeding because that’s what she wanted—and her medication. She gave me the gift that it’s okay to die.

It was the reason, he said, that he decided it was time to remove Terri’s feeding tube.

But in May 1997, two months before Claire Schiavo died, Felos is on record with the court asking for money to pursue Michael’s wish to remove the feeding tube. And Michael later admitted that he and Felos were speaking about the removal in 1996:

Q
(Felos): Your current petition to remove artificial life support was filed in May of 1988 [
sic
]. Why did you wait two and a half years to file the petition.

A
(Michael): I met you in the beginning of 1996, I believe. I was talking to another attorney.

Q:
Well, okay. I have to caution you not to testify as to any communication you might have with your attorney because of attorney/client privilege. Did you put into motion your decision to remove the feeding tube before the petition was filed in May of 1988 [
sic
]? . . . When did you make the decision and start putting it in motion?