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...Roswell Gilbert murdered his wife of 51 years. She was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Was it mercy killing or simply killing...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Table of Contents Aug. 26, 1985 | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...were only a matter of law, the public would not feel stranded. He killed her, after all. Roswell Gilbert, a 76-year-old retired electronics engineer living in a seaside condominium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., considered murdering his wife Emily for at least a month before shooting her through the head with Luger as she sat on their couch. The Gilberts had been husband and wife for 51 years. They were married in 1934, the year after Calvin Coolidge died, the year after Prohibition was lifted, the year that Hank Aaron was born. At 73, Emily had Alzheimer's disease...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Essay: The Quality of Mercy Killing | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...count, or is kindness alone an excuse for murder? Or age: maybe someone has to be 76 and married 51 years to establish his sincerity. There are an awful lot of old people and long marriages in Florida. A lot of Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis as well. Let Gilbert loose, the fear is, and watch the run on Lugers...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Essay: The Quality of Mercy Killing | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

Besides, the matter of mercy killing is getting rough and out of hand. Nobody seems to use poison anymore. In Fort Lauderdale two years ago, a 79-year-old man shot his 62-year-old wife in the stairwell of a hospital; like Emily Gilbert, she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In San Antonio four years ago, a 69-year-old man shot his 72-year-old brother to death in a nursing home. Last June a man in Miami put two bullets in the heart of his three-year-old daughter who lay comatose after a freak accident...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Essay: The Quality of Mercy Killing | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

...also feel foolish watching a case like Gilbert's (if any case can be said to be like another) because, while both feet are planted firmly on the side of law and common sense, both are firmly planted on Gilbert's side as well. The place the public really stands is nowhere: How can an act be equally destructive of society and wholly human? The reason anyone would consider going easy on Gilbert is that we can put ourselves in his shoes, can sit at his wife's bedside day after day, watching the Florida sun gild the furniture...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Essay: The Quality of Mercy Killing | 6/21/2005 | See Source »

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