Nancy. Eventually, in mid of 1986, Joe and Joyce Cruzan considered taking their daughter home so that she could die there. But they were warned by Judge Charles E. Teel of the Jasper County Circuit Court, who was overseeing their guardianship, about they could be charged criminally if she died under their care. However, the Cruzan family claimed that Nancy would not have wanted to live in this manner. They then sought a judicial approval from the Missouri state court. Two amendments formed the basis for the Cruzans’ argument in favor of removing their daughter from life support, and the basis of the state of Missouri’s argument in favor of keeping Nancy Cruzan alive. One of them was the Tenth Amendment, which said “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the …show more content…
The group introduced the Cruzans to a promising attorney named William Colby, who agreed to take their case. The proceedings were presided over by Judge Teel, who had a reputation as a conservative judge. During the three-day hearing, the Cruzans argued that their daughter had a common law right to be free from unwanted medical treatment and that state and federal constitutional rights to privacy protected this right. To have the feeding tube removed, Colby had to meet Missouri's high standard of “clear and convincing evidence” regarding the patient's wishes. This requirement was a problem because the Cruzans had no direct evidence of specific conversations with their daughter in which she expressed what she would do if faced with such unthinkable circumstances. As her father said, “When you're twenty-five years old, you don't think about dying.” All that Colby could present to the court was her character, how outgoing and fun-loving she was and would never want to live in a vegetative