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- [00:06]
Jeb Bush
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure and proud honor to introduce the governor of the state of Florida for another four years, and my dad, Jeb Bush. I thank Almighty God for the opportunity to be here today. That we must build a life centered on faith, friends and family. Government is not the answer.
- [00:32]
Anna Johansson Brown
It's a cold January morning on the steps of the Florida Capitol in 2003. American flags wave against the white building as the state's first ever two term Republican governor, Jeb Bush, prepares to be sworn in. He stands bundled up before the large crowd of flashing cameras, raising one hand and placing the other on a Bible.
- [00:51]
Jeb Bush
Faith is grounded in humility, gratitude and generosity. An acknowledgment that through life we have been given a gift that is wholly unearned and never fully understood. In our darkest hours, it is what sustains us in our final darkness. It will bring us light.
- [01:11]
Anna Johansson Brown
In the crowd is a woman named Raquel Rodriguez. We met her in episode five this season, she's a rookie on the Governor's general counsel team, having come on only one year before, in 2002. But her experience defending the law goes back more than two decades and her friendship with Governor Bush even longer.
- [01:28]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
He's a person who really believes in second chances for people. And he believes in redemption.
- [01:36]
Jeb Bush
Consider the mathematics of tragedy. Our principles must provide solace and support for the most vulnerable among us. This can be our legacy.
- [01:46]
Anna Johansson Brown
Governor Bush was more right than he knew. Less than a year into his new term, Bush would enter the Terri Schiavo case, a case with ultimate stakes from world Radio and the creative team that brings you the world and everything in it. This is lawless.
- [02:07]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I see a wicked man Walking down a broken road I see ransomed man in the storm Trying not to fall for gold Devil's at the door trying to take control but the Lord's gonna scatter his bones.
- [02:29]
Anna Johansson Brown
I'm World Radio features editor Anna Johansson Brown. In season two, we're finishing our investigation of the Terri Schiavo story, a case that in 2005 shocked the world. You might remember from season one, a few extra episodes we produced to bring you the stories behind the story, to get you up close and personal with key figures. Figures in the case, we called them the Fives. And now we've got one for season two. This is episode 5.5 per curium affirmed. Nearly two decades ago, critics across America excoriated Governor Jeb Bush for joining the Schiavo case. Others cheered him on, thanking him for his courage. We wanted to know more about Bush's role in the case. So in February 2021, we talked with Rocky Rodriguez.
- [03:23]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Hello. Hi, Lynn.
- [03:25]
Lynn Vincent
We did it.
- [03:27]
Anna Johansson Brown
Rodriguez appears on the laptop screen in front of a white background, wearing a red sweater and pearls. Because the schiavo case concluded 16 years ago, we sent her a timeline to refresh her memory on the order of events in the case of.
- [03:41]
Lynn Vincent
So did you get a chance to go through the timeline?
- [03:43]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Yes, I did. And I highlighted the things that were of direct import to my involvement.
- [03:50]
Anna Johansson Brown
Rodriguez had not only read the timeline, but expanded on it, adding details we hadn't known. Rodriguez grew up in Miami and attended Catholic school for 13 years. Her father was a lawyer in Cuba and later a political exile. She says in a 2013 article that as an infant, she probably went to multiple meetings with different exile groups plotting to overthrow Castro. In law school, a classmate gave Rodriguez the nickname Rocky because getting in the ring with professors never intimidated her. Her reputation for fearlessness would remain throughout her career. Rocky was an 18 year old freshman at the University of Miami when she first met Jeb Bush. Bush was campaigning with his father, George H.W. bush, in the 1980 presidential campaign. That's when H.W. was Ronald Reagan's vice presidential running mate. Rocky was a campaign volunteer.
- [04:45]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
We were making phone calls to Spanish speaking homes in Miami urging them to go out and vote for George Bush. I didn't stay in touch with him, but I did help him in 94 when he ran the first time, and then I worked on the 2000 election. But, you know, he's been the same guy that I met when he was in his 20s. Maybe he's a better guy. I think he would say.
- [05:12]
Anna Johansson Brown
When asked what the governor was like when there were no television cameras around, Rocky laughs.
- [05:18]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
How much time do you have? Barbara Bush had a huge influence. Even, even back when he was governor is when I would go somewhere with him and we were walking into a room, he would say, rocky, you go first. And I would say, but you're the governor. He says, ladies first. He was a gentleman through and through, but he was just always ready to light up the room with a joke. And on the other side, he was very serious about his job.
- [05:48]
Anna Johansson Brown
After a mentor nominated her for Jeb Bush's general counsel in 2002, Rocky hit the ground running.
- [05:54]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
He would go around the table and ask each person, regardless of their title, what did they think he should do.
- [06:02]
Anna Johansson Brown
Rocky says that Bush's willingness to depend on the counsel of others made him, her and everyone else around them better at their jobs.
- [06:10]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Everyone always walked away believing that he had heard them and understood them and had valued them.
- [06:20]
Anna Johansson Brown
In October 2003, Governor Bush is on his way to a Catholic Charities camp for immigrant workers when the Schindler family pays him that visit in Plant City, the one you heard about earlier this season. After the meeting, the press secretary called.
- [06:34]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Me and said, rocky, the governor just met with the Schindler family. You know, we were actively continuing to look for ways to save Terry.
- [06:46]
Anna Johansson Brown
Rocky isn't sure that Bush getting involved is a good idea.
- [06:49]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I did not believe it was appropriate for the governor to enter as a party that there was nothing in. In his constitutional authority or any other authority that allowed him to weigh in in random cases, and that trying to do so would set a very bad precedent. It was a big slippery slope.
- [07:10]
Lynn Vincent
Did your thinking evolve over time as to the appropriateness of the governor getting involved?
- [07:16]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Well, the law was passed by the legislature.
- [07:19]
Anna Johansson Brown
She means Terry's law, the Florida version.
- [07:21]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
And he told the legislature, if they passed it, I will sign it. And it's his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. And he felt that the legislation was appropriate. He is very pro life, and he believes that in the absence of really good reason, you shitter on the side of life. And it really was the only opportunity to take any kind of action to try to forestall Terry's death, because at that point, the feeding tube had already been removed. But, you know, over the course of this process, I got to know the Schindlers. I reached my own conclusion about how inappropriate it was to allow her husband to be making these decisions, given that he already had a very serious involvement with another woman with a child, and the lack of any. Any valid, by any stretch of the imagination, evidence that it was her wish to be starved and dehydrated to death. And so the more that I learned about her circumstances, you know, the more I felt personally that this was wrong.
- [08:40]
Anna Johansson Brown
Many people around the country shared Rocky's initial hesitation, but she tells us this isn't the first time the government got involved in a private case. In fact, it still does.
- [08:51]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
We see it on a regular basis with civil rights laws, with the commerce clause, with many, many issues. Maybe not intervening specifically in one case per se.
- [09:08]
Lynn Vincent
You know, I asked you the question about federal intervention in state cases, and you mentioned civil rights. We actually see that quite a bit with racial issues.
- [09:18]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Yes, absolutely. And the federal government is using existing powers that it has to intervene in some of these excessive force cases. We have a constitution, we have a bill of rights, and sometimes states and local Governments fall short of their obligations, and we do need the federal government to step in and uphold the Constitution. I wouldn't do it lightly, and I don't think every case calls for it, but this one was extraordinary.
- [09:58]
Anna Johansson Brown
The tedious crafting of Terry's law involves Rocky's legal hand from the very beginning. Using the correct language to explain the difference between nutrition and hydration and extraordinary medical measures is critical.
- [10:10]
Lynn Vincent
From my reading, I gathered that the acceptable language, as far as Senator King was concerned, was greatly watered down and made the law very narrow, almost like a bill of attainder or special law where it was just applicable to Terry.
- [10:29]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
There was never an argument made that it was a constitutional right to die case. It all came down to the very basic legislative principle that when the legislature delegates power to the governor or to some other official, it has to have parameters around it and criteria. And this was just broad discretion that wasn't limited by anything.
- [10:53]
Anna Johansson Brown
The first time the Florida House votes on Terry's law, Rocky is in her Tallahassee apartment watching the House clerk count every vote on tv. As bipartisan support grows, so does Rocky's confidence.
- [11:05]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
It clearly was an extraordinary event and a serious concern about protecting a human life and avoiding discarding them just based on the judicial formalities. I'd never seen anything like was a human thing, humanity.
- [11:29]
Anna Johansson Brown
The bill passes, and Terry's feeding tube is reinserted. But it's only a matter of time before the courts reject the legislation and ignore the testimony of people like Mayo Clinic neurologist William Cheshire, whose affidavit described Terry as responsive. Why is that?
- [11:45]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I was stunned that it would be rejected. And today I continue to read up on this because I'm still very interested in the science behind Terry's condition and Dr. Schaescher's opinion. And anytime I run across an article that has some relationship to it, I save it and I send it to Governor Bush. And I really think that it was a disservice to Terry, to the justice system and to science to summarily dismiss his opinion. I can only imagine that the court at that point didn't want to hear anymore. There were a heck of a lot of hearings and multiple appeals and multiple rulings from multiple judges. And so the reality of our system is that sometimes when you don't do things quickly enough and cases get decided, the courts are not going to look kindly to new legal arguments that are brought in. And so I understand that sense of exhaustion.
- [12:55]
Anna Johansson Brown
The legal and emotional rollercoaster is wearing on Rocky, too, as she works around the Clock trying to keep Terri alive. The case resonates on an even deeper personal level. Only a few years before, Rocky lost her mother. After a seven year battle with Alzheimer's.
- [13:10]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
She got aspiration pneumonia and ended up in the icu. I remember the emotional conversation with my father. You know, he was crying to me on the phone how he had given the order not to resuscitate her, which I agreed with. She was very far along in Alzheimer's and she was very old. And there was like nothing else that we were really ever going to be able to do for her. And I knew how difficult that was. And I understood, you know, the importance of leaving these decisions to the family.
- [13:45]
Anna Johansson Brown
As Rocky talks, she wipes away a tear from under her glasses.
- [13:48]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
But I also knew the difference between that situation and the situation that we had with Terry and how she got there and how the decisions were being made. And, you know, there just had not been a full appreciation for the different circumstances under which she found herself. You know, interestingly, if this case had come up in Europe, I think they would be appalled. It's really unthinkable that you would starve or dehydrate somebody to death whose organ functions are all operating. She wasn't on a ventilator. She wasn't on any kind of artificial cardiac stimulation. I just am still to this day, I'm shocked that this happened, particularly on the flimsiest of testimony as to what her desires were. I think it's outrageous that more proof was not required.
- [14:52]
Anna Johansson Brown
Though exhausted herself, Rocky finds fresh motivation to keep fighting. When a woman named Kate Adamson visits Tallahassee in 1995, Adamson suffered a massive stroke and was diagnosed as being in pvs. Doctors removed her feeding tube. She started slowly dehydrating to death. But one day she responded to her husband and then to medical staff. Her feeding tube was reinserted. She recovered fully, and now only needs a cane to walk.
- [15:22]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Here we had living proof in front of us of someone who had been essentially written off by the health system as never having an opportunity to recover their lives, proving us that these mistakes can happen.
- [15:39]
Anna Johansson Brown
And even though Rocky doesn't consider herself devout, she says she is a person of faith. So Pope John Paul II's support of Terry encouraged her too.
- [15:48]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
The statement from Pope John Paul ii, that just gave me so much more motivation to keep doing what we were doing to try to save Terry.
- [16:00]
Lynn Vincent
Dr. Scher's opinion, the Pope, Kate Adamson, just over and over again, you were affirmed that you were fighting on a just side, not Something that was unfounded.
- [16:15]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Medically unfounded, legally founded. We had medical and. And legal reasons.
- [16:25]
Anna Johansson Brown
On February 25, 2005, Judge Greer issued his final ruling that Terry's feeding tube would be removed. As far as the courts were concerned, that was the end of it. Rocky explains how nearly all options on the state level had been exhausted.
- [16:40]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
And I don't think that our appeal lasted longer than an hour or two before the District Court of Appeal issued an order called Procureum Affirmed pca, which means there's no explanation. And the significance of that is that when a district court of appeal, which is an intermediate court, issues and affirmance without an opinion, you have no other option because there's nothing you can take to the Florida Supreme Court. And so that effectively cut off our ability to pursue any other legal avenue on behalf of the DCF petition.
- [17:14]
Anna Johansson Brown
Many people thought Governor Bush overstepped his authority. Others thought he didn't use it enough to save Terry. So how did Bush navigate the case's legal waters?
- [17:24]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I guess where the separation of powers issue comes in is twofold. One is the, you know, let's call it the judicialists who do not want the legislature or the executive to trod over on their purview. And that once the case had already been decided and appealed multiple times and a ruling had been issued, that there was no more space for any other branch of government to become involved. And I think that's also a large part of the Supreme Court's ruling, which I disagree with, because the legislature has complete power to provide remedies to litigants. And then the other separation of powers issue was the one that I was mentioning, which was the absolute discretion that was granted the governor in the actual legislation. But I think the main ground for the court's ruling was that, hey, you know, this has already been decided by the courts. There's been plenty of due process. To this day, I believe that they were wrong.
- [18:25]
Anna Johansson Brown
Rocky has something else she wants to say about the Schindler's appeal once it went to the federal level.
- [18:30]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Oh, I think we should talk a little bit about the 11th Circuit opinion.
- [18:35]
Lynn Vincent
Okay, yeah, absolutely.
- [18:36]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
There was a three judge panel which ruled two to one against them upholding the lower court's ruling. There was a notable dissent in that ruling, and it was by Judge Charles Wilson, who previously had served as the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, appointed by President Clinton and later elevated to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and also a Roman Catholic. I remember his dissent saying, the Congress has created a remedy and the Least that the courts can do is to allow the party to exercise that remedy. It didn't mean that he was going to rule that he felt that in the end they were going to win, but that he said we shouldn't just foreclose them. Again, this is an example that you didn't have to be a conservative Republican or a partisan or an activist. People from all walks of life and from different judicial philosophies and political philosophies wanted to do the right thing. In the middle of all this, Jesse Jackson comes to Tallahassee and he and lady who was working with him on this, I don't recall her name or what her official status was. They were shopping legislation again to pass another Terry's Law. Jesse Jackson asked to meet with the governor and governor calls me down and we meet in the governor's formal office. I'm sitting across from them in one of the other chairs closer to the door. I had to pinch myself because I never imagined I was going to be in a room with Governor Bush and Jesse Jackson talking about working on something together. But this is another one of those examples where this wasn't a Republican versus Democrat issue. Here's Jesse Jackson, one of the most liberal Democrats that there was, and he's trying to help Governor Bush save Terry. That was a surreal moment.
- [20:52]
Anna Johansson Brown
Running out of time. After Greer's ruling in March 2005, Rocky finally reaches her breaking point when we.
- [20:59]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
Get shut down by all of these extreme right wing people calling and basically preventing us from doing our work and attacking the state staff. You know, we were in the final days of running out of options and I brought in all the staff to thank them for everything that they were doing but to, you know, prepare them that, you know, it looked like things were not going to work out and, you know, the toll of the emotion just took over me and I broke down in front of my staff crying.
- [21:35]
Anna Johansson Brown
Since Terry's death, she remembers her every March 31st for a few years after.
- [21:41]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I would text or call Bobby and check in on him. March 31 is an important day on my calendar. If I've ever been disappointed while I was in government, this was my highest level of disappointment that I ever experienced.
- [21:58]
Anna Johansson Brown
She closes her eyes and pauses to shake her head, just remembering.
- [22:03]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
The only thing that disappointed me more than losing Terry's life was the behavior of people who I understood to be Christians who would have been aligned with us in saving her and attacking Governor and the governor's staff for not violating a court order that we no longer could challenge.
- [22:28]
Lynn Vincent
On both sides of this case. There has been a tremendous tendency to demonize the judiciary, to demonize the legislature, to demonize the Schindler side and the Schindler's demonizing the Schibaus. There are many people that feel that Judge Greer got it wrong. Comment on that idea of this demonization.
- [22:53]
Raquel 'Rocky' Rodriguez
I've been a litigator my whole career and it's easy to demonize the other side. But you have to, as a lawyer, understand that everyone has a point of view and the lawyers are doing their job to advance the client's interests. As long as they can do so honestly, it's the job of the judge to resolve the dispute. There are many, many difficult cases. I've heard judges say if you're completely happy with every decision that you've ever made as a judge, you're not really judging. And it's true. It happens all the time. Again, do I think that the right thing happened? No. You know, we hope for perfection, but we're never going to be perfect.
- [23:42]
Lynn Vincent
Next time on Lawless. After Governor Jeb Bush orders a last minute rescue for Terry, two law enforcement agencies head for a showdown.
- [23:52]
Anna Johansson Brown
Everything was turned upside down. Policemen are supposed to protect life and help people that are in trouble, but yet they were there to make sure Terry died. Lawless is a production of World Radio. Paul Butler is our executive producer and sound engineer. Our production assistant is Lillian Hammond. Lillian also wrote this point five episode music by Will Sheehan. Lawless is reported and written by Grace Snell, Lynn Vincent and me, Anna Johansson Brown. For more resources related to this and other episodes, visit lawlesspodcast.com thanks for joining us.