Death by fiat

Folks, a gruesome crime was committed in the middle of the night of March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens. Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, a young 28-year-old, was murdered just 20 feet from her apartment door before she could get from her parked car and into the safety of her apartment building. Winston Moseley was running after Kitty and had a knife in his hand. Kitty ran, but Moseley, her murderer, was faster. Kitty ran towards a police call box, but it was too late. Moseley caught up with Kitty, who was 5’1” and 105 pounds, near a street light at the end of a parking lot. Apartment lights went on in nearby buildings. Some slid open their windows and observed the struggle below. One called out to Moseley to leave her alone and he then shut his window and the lights in the apartments went out again.

As Kitty sobbed, bleeding badly, she stumbled towards a locked doorway, trying to stay conscious.

Within five minutes, the murderer returned. He stabbed her again.

“I’m dying! I’m dying!” she cried. Several people in her building heard her screams. Lights went on once again and some windows opened. Tenants tried to see what was happening from the safety of their apartments.

Eyewitnesses saw Moseley walk along the row of doors, searching for his victim. He followed the trail of blood to the doorway where Catherine lay bleeding on the tiled floor. And there, while Kitty lay semiconscious, incoherent from pain and loss of blood, he cut off her bra and underwear and sexually assaulted her.

According to courtroom testimony, 38 eyewitnesses to her murder did nothing. Her public slaying in Queens became a symbol of America’s failure to get involved.

Now, nearly half a century later, Terri Schiavo stands out, also as a metaphor for human depravity, and to the kind of apathy and cowardice that in a broader sense has so easily led to Nazi Germany and fundamental Islam.

Terri Schiavo will die in what is almost incomprehensible apathy, and, almost inescapably, cowardice, analogous to the apathy that led dozens of Kitty Genovese’s awakened neighbors to do nothing to stop, or even summon help, in time to prevent her killer to return three times to the scene in order to finish what he had begun.

Terri Schiavo’s death is a brazen act of judicial fiat. The courts and judges who have condemned her to death succeeded with their arbitrary order.

To be sure, Congress among others, made a last ditch effort to derail the death machine, however, too little, too late is hardly enough to save face.

As for those who supported the judicial opinion that Terri should be allowed to starve to death, they stand in the dock right along with Michael Schiavo and George Greer, as accomplices to her murder.

No one will investigate the specious circumstances with which she suffered her brain damage 15 years ago, and online news services will continue to report that she suffered from an “eating disorder” and like FoxNews wrote today, of her “chemical imbalance”.

No one will condemn the hypocrisy of the ACLU who defends Muslim terrorist’s rights to three halal meals a day, no one will question why the National Organization for Women is so silent, nor will ethicists start an enquiry into Michael Schiavo’s adultery and the definition of “husband”.

We are all eyewitnesses to murder. Congratulations, America. We have sunk to a new low as it becomes apparent, with Terri Schiavo’s death, that we are no better than our enemies overseas.