(LifeSiteNews) – A man was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2022 shooting death of his girlfriend and their unborn child in the highly woke Washington, D.C. suburb of Montgomery County, Maryland, which is under 100% Democrat control.
The surprising conviction was delivered by a jury in a Rockville, Maryland courthouse, less than five miles from the Bethesda abortion center formerly run by now-deceased Dr. Leroy Carhart that continues to perform late-term abortions while unborn children are presumed to not possess a Constitutional right to life.
After less than two hours of deliberations, jurors convicted Torrey Moore, 31, of firing seven shots at his girlfriend, Denise Middleton, 26, killing her and their unborn son already named “Ezekial.”
Middleton was 8½ months pregnant with Ezekial at the time of the shooting.
Torrey Moore of Silver Spring found guilty of murdering girlfriend Denise Middleton and her unborn viable fetus in 2022 – “To my knowledge that is the first time in the history of Montgomery County that we’ve had a conviction for murder of a viable fetus” @mymcmedia pic.twitter.com/5r3pBMLlOB
— Maryam Shahzad (@maryam_mcm) November 22, 2024
As the jury entered deliberations, there was some discussion about convicting Moore of first-degree murder in the killing of Middleton and applying a different charge to the killing of the unborn baby,” according to The Washington Post.
“Jurors had more options of lesser counts for the child,” the Post reported, “including involuntary manslaughter, according to court records. In the end, though, jurors concluded that Moore had to know he was killing the unborn child as he fired shot after shot, according to the three jurors.”
The Post report continued:
The jurors said they were able to wall off their emotions as they viewed the evidence and rendered their verdict. But an hour afterward, evidence photos and testimony weighed on them. One such photograph, in particular, showed Ezekiel’s body after it had been removed from Middleton during the autopsy.
“It was a baby. It was a fully formed baby,” one of the jurors noted.
The stunning cognitive dissonance displayed in this liberal county where abortion up to birth is legal but the shooting of a pregnant mom has now been judged to be a double homicide, reflects to some degree a similar dissonance within the pro-life movement.
“A wanted baby is protected by law; an unwanted baby is considered to be ‘refuse,’” former presidential candidate and longtime pro-life activist Randall Terry told LifeSiteNews in a phone interview.
“The pro-life ‘establishment’ wants laws like this,” Terry said. “When someone kills a woman and the child she’s carrying, the pro-life ‘establishment’ wants a criminal charge brought for the death of the child, for political purposes.”
“But that same establishment does not want a criminal charge brought against a mother if she deliberately kills her own child,” he explained.
“This is the dark underbelly of our hypocrisy, and it’s not just the hypocrisy of lawmakers; it’s the hypocrisy of the pro-life establishment,” Terry said. “The insanity of the pro-life establishment is that they say abortion is murder, but that a woman can commit a murder and have no repercussions whatsoever.”
Moore faces a possible life sentence without the possibility of parole. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28.