Cruzan V. Missouri

Cont.

Verdict

Since there wasn't any opposition, Jasper County Probate Judge Charles Teel ruled that the Cruzans had met the evidential burden of "clear and convincing evidence". He issued a court order to remove Nancy feeding tube.The feeding tube was removed, on the 14nth of December in 1990 and Nancy died 4 days later.

Cruzan V. Missouri

Verdict

5-4 decision, the found that in favor of the Missouri Department of Health. By the majority by Chief Justice Rehnquist, the Court upheld the state of Missouri's higher standard for evidence of what the person would want if they were able to make their own decisions.Because family members might not always make decisions that the incompetent person would have agreed with, and those decisions might lead to actions (like withdrawing life support) that would be irreversible.

After that ruling the Cruzans gathered more evidence that Nancy would have wanted her life support terminated. By 1990 the State of Missouri withdrew from the case, since its law had been upheld and it had won the larger constitutional issue being considered.

The supreme court reversed the case based on a 4-3 decision.

the supreme court ruled that no person may refuse treatment for another, without an adequate living will. The Cruzans appealed, and in 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case.

The question was, whether the State of Missouri had the right to require "clear and convincing evidence" for the Cruzans to remove their daughter from life support.

The supreme court also consider the fact of that the State of Missouri might be violating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by refusing to remove Nancy Cruzan feeding tube. "[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

Significance

The Cruzan case helped drum up support for the federal Patient Self-Determination Act, which became effective just under a year after Nancy Cruzan's death.

It also generated a great deal of interest in living wills and advance directives.

It established that the right to die was not a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Opinion on verdict

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruzan_v._Director,_Missouri_Department_of_Health

https://www.oyez.org/cases/1989/88-1503

I personally, based on religion, do not agree to this. I do not believe a human should be able to take someone's life. But also, when the facts added up she did say she would not want to live the way she was. The case is a little too complicated for me. It still was not her decision to end her life. Time should have taken her. Either way, it probably still is considered murder.

It was not a jury

trial

Civil Case

Its a civil case because there was no crime committed. it was a legal dispute between two or more parties. A complaint was filed and then the case was issued.

Bill Colby

Prosecutor

The first right to die Case

Twenty-six years old Nancy Cruzan lost hold of her car on the night of January 11, 1983 near Carterville, Missouri. She looked about dead when the paramedics got to her, but they managed to resuscitate her.

Bill Colby began his law practice in 1982 in Washington, D.C., as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals and then in the D.C. office of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

From the late 1980s into the 1990s, Colby represented several Missouri families but his most popular case was the "the right to die" case.

Colby authored two books, Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America (2006) and Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan (2003).

Nancy was put in the hospital while in the state of a coma. Three weeks later she was diagnosed to be in a Persistent vegetative State (PVS). She was now surviving a feeding tube.

1983 to 1988, the Cruzans lost hope in their daughter's recovery, they realized that their daughter would not want to live the way she is now.

The Cruzans decided to ask the doctors to remove the feeding tube from their daughter, but the doctor refuse to do so without a court order, saying that it would be considered murder.

The Cruzans file for a case in court that the feeding tube be removed.

The trial court ruled that Nancy had effectively 'directed' the withdrawal of life support by telling a friend earlier that year that if she were sick or injured, "she would not wish to continue her life unless she could live at least halfway normally.

Defendant

Robert Harmon, director of the Missouri Department of health from 1986 to 1990.

Harmon received his bachelor and medical degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and a master of public health degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Currently 34 years in Health.

Current Work Setting is as governmental public health.