Georgetown College v. Jones

In September of 1963, a young man named Jessie E. Jones brought his wife into the hospital operated by Georgetown College in Washington, D.C. Georgetown College, later known as Georgetown University, and the Georgetown University Hospital are world-famous institutions. Mrs. Jones, age 25 and mother of a 7 month old child, had suffered a ruptured ulcer and lost two-thirds of her blood. The Joneses were both Jehovah's Witnesses. When Dr. Edwin Westura, the chief medical resident, said that Mrs. Jones would die unless given a blood transfusion, Jones refused to permit it.

Georgetown went to court for permission to give the necessary blood transfusions without Jones's consent. On 17 September 1963 the attorneys went to Judge Edward A. Tamm's chambers at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and asked for an emergency order allowing the hospital to save Mrs. Jones's life. Judge Tamm refused. At 4:00 p.m. on the same day, the attorneys next went to the chambers of Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking for an immediate review of Tamm's decision.

Judge Wright telephoned the hospital, and Dr. Westura confirmed that Mrs. Jones would die without a blood transfusion. Wright then went to the hospital with the attorneys, where he met Mr. Jones. Jones remained firm in his refusal to grant consent. Father Bunn, Georgetown's president, even came to plead with Jones to no avail. Westura and other doctors assigned to the case tried without success to explain that a transfusion is very different from drinking blood. At 5:20 p.m., Wright signed the legal orders prepared by Georgetown, and Mrs. Jones received blood transfusions that saved her life.

On 14 October 1963, Jones's attorneys, Ralph H. Decker and Bernard Margolius, filed a petition for rehearing before the full court of appeals to quash Wright's order. On 3 February 1964, the court of appeals denied Jones's petition because Mrs. Jones had long since recovered and left the hospital. There was a spirited dissent, however, by Circuit Judge Warren Burger, who subsequently became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Burger felt that the fact that Jones had signed a release upon bringing his wife to the hospital took the case out of the court's jurisdiction. In effect, the college had the release for legal protection without court help.

Also on 3 February 1964 Wright issued his written opinion concerning his actions, which recited various legal precedents permitting courts to act in preservation of human life, and ended by stating:

The final, and compelling, reason for granting the emergency writ was that a life hung in the balance. There was no time for research and reflection. Death could have mooted the cause in a matter of minutes, if action were not taken to preserve the status quo. To refuse to act, only to find later that the law required action, was a risk I was unwilling to accept. I determined to act on the side of life.

Jones appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but his petition was denied without comment on 15 June 1964.