Posted on 05/02/2005 5:06:09 AM PDT by Quaker
NEW PORT RICHEY - Pinellas- Pasco Circuit Judge George Greer, who was thrust into the national spotlight and scrutinized by pro-life advocates during the Terri Schiavo case, was a consistent judge who followed the law, colleagues say.
His professionalism and integrity was punctuated by the way he handled the Schiavo case, said Alan Scott Miller, a New Port Richey lawyer and member of the West Pasco Bar Association.
As part of Law Week, which kicks off today, the association will award Greer, 63, its Special Justice Award.
``He's getting this award for all of his contributions on the bench, not just the Schiavo case,'' Miller said. ``It's like a lifetime achievement award for an actor.''
Greer will receive the award during a banquet Thursday at the Heritage Springs Golf and Country Club, 11345 Robert Trent Jones Parkway.
For years, Greer presided over the politically and emotionally charged Schiavo case, which ended when the 41- year-old woman died March 31, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed a third time on a court order.
Some doctors said Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state since suffering brain damage after her heart stopped in 1990.
Her husband, Michael, fought for years to have her feeding stopped, saying his wife didn't want to be kept alive by artificial means.
Her parents, hoping she would recover, fought him in court after court.
Eventually, Florida's governor and Legislature and then Congress took up the battle.
Supporters and detractors watched as Greer made rulings backing Terri Schiavo's purported wishes and received threats on his life.
``I don't think anyone could ever say his decisions were unlawful,'' said Joan Nelson Hook, president of the West Pasco Bar Association. ``They were very thoughtful. His decisions were meticulous.
``We admired his ability to sustain the pressure not to follow the law. ... I think that shows his character.''
Steve Doran, association president-elect, echoed Hook's thoughts on Greer's handling of the Schiavo case.
``His decisions in that unfortunate case withstood the test of every appellate court in the country,'' Doran said. ``Those who are criticizing him are not seeing the big picture.''
When the association voted this month on this year's recipient of the Special Justice Award, the result was almost unanimous for Greer.
``He's a man of integrity. He's followed the flow. He's done an excellent job on the bench,'' said Miller. ``That's why he's getting this award.''
In addition to Greer's award, the Law Week celebration offers events that allow the community to get a closer look at what the West Pasco Bar Association and the law profession are about, Hook said.
``It's an opportunity to interact with all levels of the community,'' she said.
``It's not just about battles; law is a way of life.''
Here are some events:
* Representatives of the association will be at Gulf View Square mall in Port Richey offering free legal advice from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Friday.
* All week, 22 lawyers will visit Pasco schools to discuss the law and this week's national theme, ``The American Jury: We the People in Action.''
* The 2nd District Court of Appeal will hold a special session at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the West Pasco Government Center, 7530 Little Road, in county commission chambers.
* Business suits, shoes and accessories will be collected at area law offices for Connections, a not-for-profit organization that helps people looking for jobs.
The following law offices are collecting men's and women's apparel:
The Law Offices of Attridge, Cohen & Lucas, 7136 Little Road, New Port Richey; The O'Conner Law Group, 9735 U.S. 19, Suite 2, Port Richey; Pejot Law, 11911 Pine Forest Drive, New Port Richey; and The Law Offices of Gay & Ehrhardt, 5318 Balsam St., New Port Richey.
Reporter Lisa A. Davis can be reached at (727) 815-1083.
The Germans didn't have a Bill of Rights. We do. And it is Judges who are ignoring its provisions.
Non-sequiter. Are you comparing the act of killing disabled folks with building highways? Doesn't make any sense...
Just holler if you want me to post more, even more hateful posts of Central Scrutiniser.
"It is no accident that the Founding Fathers left the protection of health, safety and morality to the States. It is one of the most important safeguards we have against run away authoritarianism." So true, yet your perspective on the Terri Schiavo case--as stated in your essay at your website--starts with an erroneous assumption, that Terri was brain dead for the past decade plus. If you CHOOSE to accept as inerrant the rubber stampery of the judiciary, without at least digging deeper to see if she actually was 'gone' (as you have chosen to believe), then don't be put off when folks dismiss your further opines reagrding the efficacy of a probate judge ordering that she be executed for what is clearly a judgement that she was gone already. Frankly, willy-nilly sounds about right for the repeated unjust rulings in Florida over Terri's assumed wishes. [HINT: tube feeding wasn't even considered an extraordinary life support measure when Terri (at 20 years old!) is alleged to have made her assertion regarding 'being kept alive if severely disabled'; Judge Greer disallowed sworn testimony based on his own flawed memory of Karen Quinlan's 'aliveness'.]
The Nazis took no account of individual wishes or popularity. They imposed their will and made laws that enabled that. The German judiciary embraced those laws, flawed as they were. The Tribunal found that in doing so they committed crimes against humanity, i.e., violated laws that any people who lay claim to the title of "civilized society" would accept. Among those flawed laws were the forced euthanasia of individuals who were deemed, by others, to have little or no "quality of life", or who were incapable of making their wishes known, by some measure. That sounds awfully familiar, given some of the discussion posted here in recent days.
The Nazis created a "crisis," and assumed whatever power they needed to enforce their morality on the population. Had there been an independent local judiciary, hearing cases involving individual rights, there would have been many checks on that new morality.
They used fabricated crises, to be sure. They also looked for scapegoats, people they could hold of as "examples" of what a "superior race" would do to in the name of their laws and concepts of "worthy life" and racial purity. Persons deemed unfit or inferior were disposed of. The Nazi regime held no concept of unalienable rights. For them, the right to live was subject to the whims of the State, the Leader of that State, and the agencies by which those whims were effected, the military, the police, the courts.
Do you realize what you just said? That a lawyer must like his/her client and have sympathy for them and the client must like the attorney? Okay, now that is truly one of the most ignorant statements I've ever read. That would certainly rule out most public defenders and any lawyer who defends a criminal. Lawyers aren't supposed to be in a popularity contest.
Good one!
As far as people who hate us: I'll share with you my experience, and maybe you can get something out of it: I've had to understand that some people will hate me, and some will like me. It's okay. I really don't bother to read what people say about me who hate me. Their opinions about me are frankly none of my business.
The people who like me, I consider my friends, and that's all that matters to me.
I am, however, disgusted at those individuals who will repeatedly trash this forum and it's owners, then come over here and play-act like everythings just hunky-dory.
You sound confused. Did you or didn't you?
But here, let me clear up your confusion:
States' Rights are the rights of the people of each State to govern themselves. They involve the rights of millions of people--people fully functional, not propped up in bed with tubes going into and out of them.
457 posted on 05/03/2005 1:23:41 PM EDT by Ohioan
The issue here was to determine who would speak for that person, since she had lost most of the attributes of human life, including the ability to form a clear intention as to her own future. Why do you feel a need to state the issue in a contorted manner? Why do you imply that she was being denied anything that she could have done for herself? Whether her husband or parents interpretation of her wishes would be sanctioned was certainly an issue. And someone had to make that determination. The Judicial intervention was to protect Terry! The Court weighed the evidence and made a decision.
459 posted on 05/03/2005 1:29:36 PM EDT by Ohioan
Oh, and here's a doozy!
It is not I, who have engaged in moral contortions. When you take umbrage at my description of Terry Schiavo's state, you are refusing to look at the quantity and quality of life. Life and death are not absolutes. (This is discussed at length in my essay, Terry Schiavo.) By any rational standard, at least from the standpoint of defining the characteristics of a human life, Terry was more than half dead.
467 posted on 05/03/2005 1:42:42 PM EDT by Ohioan
There are others...
No, I am pointing out that playing the "Nazi card," is irrelevant to the argument--except as to the Nazi centralization of power, which is a true parallel to what some here seem to seek.
The fact is, that no one on this thread has advocated "killing disabled folks." The question in Florida was not "killing disabled folks," but whether her husband or parents would make the decision as to what Terry Schiavo would have wanted to happen with what life was left to her. That is a question specific to an individual case--no grand attack on people in wheel chairs, etc.. Stop dramatizing the issue out of proportion. You are hurting causes that you believe in, by doing so.
So say you.
But somehow I doubt it.
Truly this gives another meaning to Florida being God's waiting room.
You won't find any place, there, either, where I am trying to impose a view of the quality of life on anyone else. Persuading people to support the right to a local judiciary, of course, is not imposing anything on anyone.
Your posts show something quite different from what you claim.
It is impossible for you to make the arguments you are trying to make without making a judgement about quality of life.
I've said it many times, but I'll say it again: 'Quality of life' is nothing but another name for the slippery slope into barbarism.
If we don't hold the line against those who ignore and thereby revoke the inalienable right to life, the republic is quite literally finished.
My basic point, is to uphold the local County Probate Court as the proper venue for such a case. Obviously, someone had to make some decisions here, and that was the proper forum.
My secondary point--which is indeed my motivating point--is that the fanatic attacks on the Florida Court are undermining Conservative credibility in general, and in particular Conservative credibility in the fight to limit abortion, which I fully support.
don't vote for any republicans in name only and help Florida elect REAL leaders. continue to back us up as we demonize Judge Greer. It was his poison pen. You must understanding that in 1998, they passed a law in Florida's constitution that the judges get their funding from Tallahassee, thus, they are not really an independent body. The Judges are beholding to the legislature and DO WHAT JIM KING WANTS THEM TO DO. Jim King wanted Terri to go to heaven. That's why Terri's gone.
You have that backwards. In barbaric times, no one cared about the quality of anyone else's life. It was all self-centered. It is only with the increase in enlightenment and the growth of philosophy that we begin to look more closely, and develop more complexity in our values.
But what are you saying. Don't bother you with the details, you want to see life as an absolute, and do not want to consider the actual realities of life? That sounds like a devotion to cant--to a mere word "life,"--over truth. You are reducing a complex concept, that the Founding Fathers embraced, the idea of unalienable rights, to a mere slogan, a shibboleth.
The fact is that if you want to get back to Natural Rights concepts--to the God given rights of Man in a state of Nature--Terry Schiavo died 15 years ago. Was her resuscitation successful? Most people would question that it was. But that does not mean that we try to impose that question on anyone else. I inject it here to add perspective, not dogma. There is an immense difference between perspective and dogma.
And while on the subject of traditional American values, note that Life is set forth in parallel with Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, with a suggestion that there are other equally important rights. The importance of the quality of life, then, was hardly neglected. But you just want to keep on and on about "Life," without further definition, quantification or qualification.
GREER'S GUILTY AS SIN. No matter how many monuments are erected for him or medals they pin on his hollow chest, he's GUILTY AS SIN.
Seems like the mods don't agree with your rules for the forum.
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