Unthinkable, right? Convicted murderers would never be treated so unjustly or have such a cruel punishment imposed—at least not in this day and age.

Yet, this imaginary scenario is disturbingly close to the way that a purely innocent and profoundly disabled woman named Terri Schiavo is being treated.

But, you say, Terri hasn’t been sentenced to death. She isn’t being executed.

While that is true technically, the analogy between her sentence of death and a death penalty case is apt. Terri’s food and water have been taken away, not by her husband/guardian Michael Schiavo, but at the explicit order of court (at Schiavo’s request). That means her pending death by dehydration is not just being allowed, but has been required by the state.

Not only that, Terri’s situation is akin to that of the condemned prisoner imagined above—who could be saved if only the court would consider newly discovered facts. Here is just a sampling of facts and allegations that emerged since the original trial:

Mr. Schiavo informed a medical malpractice jury, from which he was seeking millions of dollars in 1992, that he would care for his wife for the rest of his life, that she would live a normal life span, and that she would be provided rehabilitation and therapy. As soon as the money was in the bank, however, he refused all therapy and started to refuse medical treatment such as antibiotics. In other words, Schiavo’s story changed when he went to court in 1998 seeking her early death, casting serious doubt on his testimony that Terri would “want to die.”

Three nurses have signed affidavits under penalty of perjury that Mr. Schiavo used to go to Terri’s nursing home and angrily demand to know why his wife was not yet dead.

Friends of Terri have come forward stating that she believed in the old maxim, where there is life, there is hope. Indeed, all of her close friends and family deny that she would want to die under these circumstances.

Several doctors and therapists have testified in written affidavits that she is not in a persistent vegetative state, and indeed, that she could be improved with proper therapy—treatment she has been denied since 1993.

Dehydration may not be a painless way to die as some have asserted. Indeed, if the patient is conscious and not otherwise dying, it can be agonizing.
Surely, facts and allegations of this substance presented in a death penalty case, would lead to a new trial, or at the very least, become the basis of a commutation. After all, when a human life is at stake, we strive as a society to give the benefit of every reasonable doubt to life.