By Judith Gayle | Political Waves (the Planet Waves politics blog)
Last week, the courts gave a nod to vigilantism as the people of Kansas heard arguments in defense of Scott Roeder. Ultimately, the jury deliberated a mere 37 minutes — always a bad sign for the defense — before finding Roeder guilty of premeditated, first-degree murder in the shooting death of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few remaining providers of late-term abortion.
The doctor, who sustained not only personal and legal attacks over the last decade but was the target of a FOX News propaganda blitz portraying him as a serial killer of the innocent, was shot dead in his church on a Sunday morning in May of last year. During the trial, radical Christianist activists marched around the courthouse, holding signs that said, among other things, “Tiller murdered 60,000.” Fundamentalists consider abortion a continuing holocaust of the unborn.