Inmate Claimed Terri Schiavo’s Feeding Tube Diverted Food From His Stomach

Posted Sep 19, 2007 by Josh Poltilove

Updated Sep 19, 2007 at 02:29 PM

An inmate filed a $500 million civil rights complaint last week against Terri Schiavo, her parents and husband, claiming her feeding tube was diverting food from his stomach. He also sought a restraining order against them.

But a U.S. district judge in Tampa tossed out the complaint Tuesday, saying it describes several “fantastic and delusional scenarios.”

South Carolina inmate Jonathan Lee Riches’ handwritten complaint said Schiavo’s feeding tube caused him to suffer hunger pains and dizziness and that her family conspired with the Bureau of Prisons to prevent him being provided food with proper nutritional value.

Schiavo died in a Pinellas Park hospice in 2005 after doctors removed a feeding tube from the brain-damaged woman. Her parents wanted the tube to remain in her system, while her husband, Michael Schiavo, fought that option.

Riches wrote that if he didn’t die in prison, Michael Schiavo and Tampa Bay Devil Rays players would drown him at Clearwater Beach.

“Defendants Everyday tease me with grill-smelling food outside the gates,” he wrote. “Defendants eat in front of me to torture my mind. Defendants pelt me with Florida oranges.”

U.S. District Judge James Moody on Tuesday said Riches’ complaint was filled with “rambling, disjointed complaints against individual defendants completely unrelated to the Bureau of Prisons.”

Riches previously filed a similar action against Elvis Presley and Neverland Ranch, Moody wrote.

In the complaint against Schiavo and her family, Riches wrote that Robert and Mary Schindler starred in “Schindler’s List” and that Michael Schiavo calls him “Holocaust survivor boy” because he weighs 124 pounds.

Riches’ other complaints include:

* The defendants laced his food with pesticides and dish soap.

* The defendants shut off his cell phone.

* Seagulls and crows laugh at him on the defendants’ orders.

According to a Wikipedia entry on Riches, he filed a civil rights lawsuit against George W. Bush et al in March 2006. “The “et al” list continues for 56 more pages and includes 783 defendants (both living, dead, and non-entities) such as the survivors of the Holocaust, Pizza Hut, Dane Cook, Three Mile Island, Paris Hilton, Dennis Hopper, Mount Rushmore, the Ming Dynasty, Mein Kampf, “Various Buddhist Monks”, Medieval Times, The Da Vinci Code, and the celestial object Pluto.”

Click here to see the complaint.

Click here to see the judge’s order.

Click here to see the motion he filed against George W. Bush et al.

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