My second diary.  Be gentle.

So now that the extent of Terri Schiavo’s brain damage has indisputable proof, what does Governor Jeb Bush decide to do – try and prosecute Michael Schiavo.

From the St. Petersburg Times

Refusing to give up on the Terri Schiavo case, Gov. Jeb Bush has asked Pinellas prosecutors to sort out time discrepancies Michael Schiavo has provided regarding the hour he found his wife unconscious 15 years ago.

…

Bush said he decided to seek the investigation after talking with Dr. Jon Thogmartin, the Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner who spent nearly 11 weeks preparing Schiavo’s autopsy report, and learning that the doctor could not determine what led Schiavo to collapse in 1990.

Thogmartin met with the governor the day before the autopsy report was released publicly.

“What he did say to me that was troubling … was that there was some doubt about when she collapsed and how long it took for a phone call to be made to 911,” Bush said. “I think that is worthy of some investigation.”

So the fact he’s confused about the time 15 years after the incident troubles the governor?  I guess I’ll be next because 2 years ago my mother had a massive stroke that nearly killed her.  I found her and called 911 immediately and honestly can’t remember what time it was.  This is strange because the time was very important to the doctors (due to treatment options) so I must have repeated it a dozen times that night, but my mind has now blurred it and yet I remember the 911 call vividly.

You may recall that Gov. Jeb Bush stated that the reason DCF had to investigate was there were new and compelling allegations of abuse (approximately 30 complaints).  There had been approximately 70 complaints previously that had been investigated and found without merit.

The St. Petersburg Times went to court to get access to the supposedly “new and compelling” complaints.

But documents released by DCF Friday reveal few fresh allegations that Schiavo was abused or neglected. Investigators wrote that there were “no indicators” of abuse in any of the cases.

“The preponderance of the evidence shows that Michael Schiavo followed doctors’ orders (regarding) Ms. Schiavo’s diagnosis of being in a persistent vegetative state and that he provided her with appropriate care,” one investigator wrote.
DCF released nearly 70 pages of documents Friday in the Schiavo case after the St. Petersburg Times sought their release in court. Perhaps the only allegation in the batch not heard before: A March 7 complaint that accused a nursing assistant at Schiavo’s Pinellas Park hospice of using an “air freshener substance” in her bath water in July, which caused a rash. DCF investigators learned the substance was an aromatherapy oil that the assistant placed in a spray bottle, not in Schiavo’s bath.

Gov. Jeb Bush had also decided to use DCF to take custody of Terri Schiavo.  Only because the local police had said they would enforce the judge’s order was a confrontation between different law officers averted.

From the Miami Herald.

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted — but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge’s order, The Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called “a showdown.”

Jeb Bush is barred due to term limits from running for governor again so any political gains with right-to-life extremists (just the fringe element) would be for other offices.  But he swears he isn’t running for president in 2008.  Which begs the question – WHY?  If expert after expert testifies that there was no abuse, no evidence of any impropriety on Michael Schiavo’s behalf then the pursuit of more investigations, if not for political gain, must be for a personal vendetta.  Surely that is an abuse of power.

Washington Post:

In the four years after Michael Schiavo won the right to remove his wife’s feeding tube, the state’s social welfare agency investigated 89 complaints of abuse but never found that he or anybody else harmed Terri Schiavo, records released late Friday show.

The state Department of Children and Families repeatedly concluded that Michael Schiavo ensured his wife’s physical and medical needs were met, provided proper therapy for her and had no control over her money. They also found no evidence that he beat or strangled her, as his detractors have repeatedly charged.

The 45 pages of confidential abuse reports made public by court order show that despite the litany of complaints, investigators never found that Terri Schiavo had been abused.

That raises what Michael Schiavo’s attorney said is a key question: Why, during her last weeks of life, did DCF twice try to intervene in the seven-year dispute between Terri Schiavo’s husband and her parents?

Which begs the further questions Why are they still investigating?