APPLETON, Wisconsin (LifeSiteNews) — A Wisconsin jury has rejected a wrongful death suit against a hospital for the 2021 death of an unvaccinated girl with Down syndrome, which the parents have stressed was due to medical misconduct.

As originally covered by LifeSiteNews in February 2022, Grace Schara was admitted to St. Elizabeth Hospital on October 6, 2021, five days after testing positive for COVID-19. Schara had Down syndrome and was described by her father Scott as “high functioning.” St. Elizabeth is part of Ascension Medical Group, which purports to be “faith-based.”

Parents Scott and Cindy Schara detailed a string of troubling aspects of their daughter’s treatment, starting with hospital staffers criticizing their rejection of the COVID-19 shots and their acceptance of alternative treatment protocols, then escalating to inaccurate blood oxygen readings being used to attempt to have Grace put on a ventilator.

Most significantly, she was wrongly labeled a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) case and given a cocktail of sedatives, anxiety drugs, and morphine as her health declined, and she ultimately died after relatives refused the family’s insistence she wasn’t a DNR and pleas to resuscitate her. The family added at the time that hospital officials refused to subsequently meet with them to hear their grievances.

Since then, the Scharas have worked to raise awareness of Grace’s story through various means, including a website, anyone in the media who will listen, and billboards. Earlier this month, LifeSiteNews reported the impending start of the law-awaited jury trial for the family’s case that Grace died because of a “lethal cocktail of drugs” and a “fraudulent DNR order” due to “negligence” and “non consensual treatment” from medical professionals.

The case was considered a long shot, but if successful could have set a potentially transformative precedent for hospital liability and reform.

Now, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that after almost two weeks of argument and two hours of jury deliberation, the jurors rejected all 13 of the Schara family’s claims against St. Elizabeth, 11 of them with no dissenters. Judge Mark McGinnis rejected an initial charge, battery, before submitting it to the jury, rejecting the family’s argument that administering IV drugs without the family’s consent qualified.

Schara family attorney Michael Edminister argued that the hospital violated its own standards more than a dozen times during Grace’s care, including a nurse testifying she could not remember if Grace had been wearing a do-not-resuscitate bracelet. “There should never be confusion over whether a 19-year-old girl is a DNR or not,” he said. “Whether or not the defendants have to own their mistakes is now up to you.”

Defense attorneys argued that doctors had “extensive” conversations with the mentally disabled teenager before labeling her DNR and that the potent drugs she had been given “would not have tripped any red flags.”

“I 100% believe it was consented to, given how extensive the conversations and the detail that went into those conversations,” Dr. Gavin Shokar testified.

“Personally, of course, I’m disappointed,” Scott Schara responded to the verdict. “But God knew this was going to … He knew the verdict before we ever stepped one foot in this court, so we know God’s will was done, even though we’re personally disappointed.”