Supreme Court rejects latest Schiavo appeal

updated 12:30 a.m. ET March 31, 2005

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case for the sixth time late Wednesday, taking less than two hours to reject her parents’ request that the feeding tube for their brain-damaged daughter be reinserted.

The one-sentence ruling came hours after the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly declined to intervene in the case. Justices did not explain their decision and there was no indication how they voted.

The Supreme Court’s decision, on Schiavo’s 13^th day without food or water, was the latest in a string of losses in state and federal courts for her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and the second time in a week the high court rejected the parents’ claims.

Schiavo’s husband, Michael, insists he is carrying out his wife’s wishes by having the tube pulled. It was removed March 18 after a yearslong legal battle, and Terri Schiavo, 41, was expected to survive one to two weeks without it.

The woman’s parents maintained that while Schiavo was weak, her organs were functioning Wednesday and she was responsive. They urged supporters to keep up efforts to reconnect her feeding tube before it is too late.

“Under the circumstances, she looks darn good, surprisingly good,” Bob Schindler said after visiting his daughter Wednesday afternoon. “I’m asking that nobody throw in the towel as long as she’s fighting, to keep fighting with her,” he said.

George Felos, the attorney for Schiavo’s husband, declined to comment.

‘Improper’
The appeals court had raised the Schindlers’ hopes late Tuesday when it agreed to consider their emergency bid for a new hearing in the case. But 15 hours later, the court ruled against granting a hearing — the fourth time since last week that it ruled against the Schindlers.

“Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” wrote Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., one of the members of the Atlanta-based 11^th Circuit. “While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty.”

The judge went on to deliver a scathing attack on politicians who got involved in the case, saying the White House and lawmakers “have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

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