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The husband of Terri Schiavo was honored by a group that advocates guardianship services for his years-long efforts to get his wife's feeding tube disconnected. Michael Schiavo was given the Guardian of the Year Award by the Florida State Guardianship Association yesterday. Terri Schiavo lived in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years before dying in March. She died after a protracted legal battle between her husband and her parents over her end-of-life wishes. She died from dehydration after her feeding tube was disconnected. A Franciscan friar who serves as the Schindler family spokesman Brother Paul O'Donnell said the award...

While editorials across the nation agreed in chorus that at last, Terri Schiavo will rest in peace, the autopsy report declined such certainty:"It is the policy of this office that no case is ever closed and that all determinations are to be reconsidered upon receipt of credible, new information." Even if no new information surfaces, how Terri Schiavo was put to death is causing many Americans to confront their own death. Pat Anderson, for a long time the attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents, said the day Terri died of dehydration as ordered by the courts and her husband: "Euthanasia in...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - There is no evidence that Terri Schiavo's collapse 15 years ago was caused by criminal activity, said a prosecutor asked by Gov. Jeb Bush to look into the case. Bush, who asked State Attorney Bernie McCabe to further investigate Schiavo's case after her autopsy last month, responded Thursday by saying he considers the state's involvement with the matter finished. "Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed," Bush said in a two-sentence response to McCabe. The governor is vacationing in Maine and couldn't be reached for further comment,...

LARGO - In what could be a final chapter in the legal saga of Terri Schiavo, Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe says he could find no evidence that Michael Schiavo caused his wife's collapse 15 years ago. In a June 30 letter to Gov. Jeb Bush, McCabe suggested ending the state's inquiry into the case. Bush responded Thursday in a two-sentence letter to McCabe: "Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed." Bush asked McCabe last month to investigate Schiavo's collapse on the morning of Feb. 25, 1990. He cited questions...

Oh! Well, it's OK to have Murdered Her Then. Mr. Thogmartin has told us that, after fifteen years of a patient lying in bed recovering, Terri Schiavo might have fully recovered from any abuse she endured. Miraculously he was also unable to see whether or not this person had, fifteen years ago, a heart attack or not. Of course, I’ve never met anyone whose cardiologist was ever unsure, say 24 hours after the incident, that a heart attack had occurred or not. No, in my experience cardiologists can tell you precisely how many nano-seconds the heart attack lasted. Continuing, the...

Regardless of what his critics say, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum insists he did the right thing by visiting brain-damaged Terri Schiavo in Florida before she died March 31. "I stood up for what I believe was right in defending a disabled person from being executed. I don't think we should execute disabled people who have not expressed their desire as to how they should be handled, how their life should be dealt with. "I don't think we should end their life simply because they are disabled. That's a very telling thing about a society that is willing to say that...

Lima, Jul. 26, 2005 (CNA) - The President of the Pontifical Council for Heath Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, recalled the Terry Schiavo case this week and said “they killed her” by denying her food and hydration.According to the cardinal, “Food and hydration are never considered medicine.”  “To remove them means euthanasia, it means killing, and so this woman was killed by hunger and starvation.  Let’s stop with the euphemisms—they killed her,” he stated.“Law consists of a rational ordering that seeks the common good and not the common evil,” Cardinal Lozano noted, “but many times there are laws that are...

Why did Michael Schiavo, a Floridian with Pennsylvania roots, endorse Democrat Tim Kaine's run for Virginia governor? Your guess is as good as Kaine's, whose campaign first learned the news on Wednesday after Schiavo's PR firm gave the mini-scoop to the Washington Post. The maneuver was meant to motivate base Democrats in Virginia six days before the Nov. 8 vote. Schiavo's statement said lots of mean things about Jeb Bush and Florida, and only a few nice things about Kaine and Virginia. This makes us wonder: Is Schiavo focused on Virginia's well being, or his own political future? Doesn't Florida...

Terri Schiavo's husband starts a PAC devoted to defeating the Bible-thumping politicians who used his comatose wife as a football. By Michael Scherer Dec. 7, 2005 | At the height of the battle, Michael Schiavo appeared to be a reluctant cultural warrior. His wife, Terri, lay comatose, in her 15th year of vegetative slumber, connected to a feeding tube, but well beyond resuscitation. Around her hospice, a political hurricane swirled. In Terri's name, President George Bush interrupted his vacation, Sen. Bill Frist played doctor from the Senate floor, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched a flimsy criminal investigation, and Rep. Tom...

It is frequently said that truth is stranger than fiction. In the case of Michael Schiavo, husband of the now deceased Terri Schiavo, this is precisely correct. You may recall that during the years that Terri Schiavo suffered from a debilitating condition, Michael worked very hard to acquire legal permission to kill his wife by denying her the basic human right of receiving food and water. He argued that she would not want to be fed through a tube. His view was that she actually died 12 years earlier, and that the person in the hospital bed was not truly...

As the yearslong battle between Michael Schiavo and Bob and Mary Schindler came to a head in March, the case drew in Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Vatican and the White House. National TV networks chronicled every twist of the hot-button issue. Michael Schiavo wanted to carry out what he said were his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially. The Schindlers disputed their daughter had such end-of-life wishes and had held out hope that she could have improved with therapy. They said she had interacted with them. The dispute nearly created a constitutional crisis. Congress, the president...

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — Michael Schiavo, whose brain-damaged wife was at the center of a contentious end-of-life battle that played out on a worldwide media stage, has remarried, family members said. Schiavo married his longtime girlfriend Jodi Centonze on Saturday in a private church ceremony, said John Centonze, the brother of the bride. Schiavo's former wife, Terri, died in March after her feeding tube was removed. She had suffered irreversible brain damage after collapsing at age 26 in 1990. Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings fought for years to keep her alive, arguing that she had some level of consciousness. Florida...

SAFETY HARBOR - Michael Schiavo and Jodi Centonze were married in a private ceremony at Espiritu Santo Catholic Church on Saturday. "It was very emotional," said John Centonze, brother of the bride, just after the noon ceremony. "It's been a long time coming. A lot of things happened in between." The wedding came a day after the couple applied for a Pinellas County marriage license and 10 months after the death of Schiavo's first wife, Terri. Terri Schiavo died March 31, two weeks after her feeding tube was removed, and 15 years after a cardiac arrest that left her in...

They might have done this years ago, but he already had a wife. Michael Schiavo and Jodi Centonze applied for a marriage license in Pinellas County on Friday. She listed her last marriage as ending in divorce on March 29, 1989. He listed his as ending in death on March 31, 2005. Their relationship has long been a curious sidenote in the national right-to-die case of Michael's first wife, Terri Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years. Michael Schiavo, 42, has called Jodi Centonze his fiancee for at least six years, relatives said. They live together...

MODESTO, Calif. - The parents of condemned murderer Scott Peterson hired two noted attorneys to begin his appeals. "Since he is innocent, we don't want him sitting there any longer than he has to," Lee Peterson, the former fertilizer salesman's father, said Tuesday. Peterson was convicted Nov. 12, 2004, in the murders of his pregnant wife, Laci, and the fetus she carried. Death sentences are automatically appealed in California, but it can sometimes take several years for inmates to receive a state-appointed attorney. Peterson's trial lawyer Mark Geragos could have handled the appeals but said he felt the case warrants...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia police announced Saturday that they have charged the 25-year-old former boyfriend of LaToyia Figueroa with her death. Stephen Poaches, of West Philadelphia, the missing pregnant woman's former boyfriend and the father of her unborn baby, was charged with the murder of the 24-year-old woman. Figueroa has been missing for a month. Philadelphia police recovered her remains early Saturday in nearby Chester, located about 13 miles southwest of Philadelphia. When Poaches was arrested in Chester, police said he was wearing a bullet proof vest and was carrying a pistol. LaToyia Figueroa's father, Melvin Figueroa, said he was...

DORAL, Fla. - (KRT) - He has been rebuked by the Vatican, castigated by Congress and slandered on the Internet, but Michael Schiavo was welcomed as a hero Friday by a state organization whose members make end-of-life decisions for people unable to make them for themselves. The Florida State Guardianship Association bestowed its Guardian of the Year Award on Schiavo for carrying out his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially despite a drumbeat of withering criticism. In a rare public appearance, Schiavo, 42, modestly accepted the award at the association's 18th annual conference at the Doral Golf Resort...

PANAMA CITY, Fla. -- A Florida sports fan has been sentenced to death for killing his wife after sex. Christoper Offord got angry because his wife wanted to cuddle after they had sex -- but he wanted to watch sports on television. She died after being struck dozens of times with a claw hammer. Offord later confessed to a bartender at a sports bar, and eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. In imposing the death sentence, the judge said the brutality of the crime outweighed any of the defendant's possible mental problems. Offord did not speak in court, but admitted...

Famed detective Mark Fuhrman is calling for a grand jury probe of the Terri Schiavo case, saying there's no other way to get to the bottom of the unexplained 1990 collapse of the then-26-year-old woman. "I want a grand jury investigation," he told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity on Tuesday, adding that Schiavo's parents also favor the move. Fuhrman, whose book "Silent Witness" hit bookstores this week, said that if Florida prosecutors decline to convene a grand jury probe, the Justice Department should step in. He asked, "Were Terri's civil rights violated? When I looked at this case, she never...

Article Last Updated: 4/15/2005 08:49 AM Guilty plea by Hacking likely today The plan all along? All signs indicate neither side ever intended to go to trial By Matthew D. LaPlante The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune Expect no gasps of surprise if Mark Hacking pleads guilty today. It appears that he has never intended to do anything otherwise.    Witnesses pivotal to the prosecution's case were never contacted by defense investigators - a fundamental first step in establishing a trial defense in any case, let alone one in which the defendant faces life imprisonment.    And, apparently content that...