Poetic Judge Rejects Right-to-Die Plea : Says Parents’ Injunction Request Would Condemn Comatose Son

A federal judge Monday refused to order that a 20-year-old comatose man be disconnected from life-support equipment at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa.

Citing passages from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and the U.S. Constitution, Judge Ferdinand Fernandez rejected the contentions of a Long Beach couple, Adalgisa and Arturo Sanchez, that Fairview was violating their son Jesus’ right to privacy by continuing to feed him through a surgically implanted tube.

Jesus suffered severe brain damage in a 1984 traffic accident and has been in a coma ever since. He has been cared for at Fairview, a Costa Mesa hospital which treats severely handicapped patients, since 1985.

Richard Stanley Scott, the couple’s attorney, vowed to appeal the ruling.

Scott had argued in federal court at Los Angeles that Jesus’ father, as his conservator, had a constitutional right to refuse medical treatment on behalf of his son.

The Sanchezes said in court papers that before his accident, Jesus had told his mother “that if he were ever severely injured, he would not wish to remain in a totally helpless state or condition.” Thus, Scott argued that Jesus’ parents were attempting to carry out his wish.

Scott had sought a preliminary injunction from the judge that would have required Fairview physicians to stop feeding Jesus while the matter was being argued in the courts.

But officials at Fairview strongly opposed the Sanchezes’ petition, arguing that the hospital could not take part in actions that would lead to a patient’s death.

“It’s a policy of our department to uphold and maintain life,” said Hugh Kohler, Fairview’s executive director. The family’s request, he said, “runs totally anathema to our understanding of why we’re here and what our charge is. It is 180 degrees from where we think we should be.”

Laurie Pearlman, the deputy state attorney general who represented the hospital in court, said: “The 14th Amendment (to the Constitution) guarantees Jesus a right to life, and whether he is handicapped or not, he is entitled to that right.”

Pearlman added: “To allow a third party (Jesus’ parents) to come in and force a death sentence upon him is a very dangerous precedent.”

In siding with the state hospital, Fernandez said that he would “not accept the plaintiff’s invitation (to) read into the U.S. Constitution a mandated solution to hotly debated questions about our relationships to one another and to the eternal. . . .

“The plaintiffs come to this court for a preliminary injunction. That preliminary relief will condemn Jesus Sanchez to death at their request.” Quoting Thomas, the judge continued: “One can only speculate if he would go gently into that good night or rage against the dying of the light.”

The judge’s citation apparently was prompted by a literary reference in Scott’s brief, which concluded with a quote attributed to English novelist Somerset Maugham on his 90th birthday: “I walk with death, hand in hand, and death’s hand is warmer than my own.”

Scott, who has participated in several prominent, so-called right-to-die cases, could not be reached for comment after Fernandez’s ruling, but he released a statement through his secretary saying that he would appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francicso.

“Judge Fernandez doubted that there was any basis in the federal Constitution which required states to let ‘others’ make life and death decisions for the ill,” Scott’s statement said. “Apparently, this means that physicians take over all decision-making as soon as a patient becomes incompetent. . . . The family is very disappointed in this ruling.”

United Press International contributed to this story.