{"id":22076,"date":"2010-02-02T13:47:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T18:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=22076"},"modified":"2011-09-24T16:12:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T20:12:11","slug":"tiller-murder-trial-verdict-finds-roeder-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/tiller-murder-trial-verdict-finds-roeder-guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Justifiable Homicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle<\/strong> | Political Waves (the Planet Waves politics blog)<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in the shooting death of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few remaining providers of late-term abortion.<\/p>\n

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.”\u00a0 Fundamentalists consider abortion a continuing holocaust of the unborn.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pleading voluntary manslaughter, Roeder’s attorneys were permitted to argue the defendant’s justification for murder for the first time in US legal history; in short, that he was compelled by his conscience to perform a justifiable homicide. Pro-choice activists were stunned by the judges acquiescence to this strategy, as the case was promptly turned into a rallying-point for pro-life activism and had the potential to weaken penalties for home grown acts of terrorism.<\/p>\n

Eventually it became clear that the defense — arguing that Roeder had an unreasonable but honest belief that deadly force was justified — could not make its case, and the judge ruled that he would not allow the jury to consider a verdict of manslaughter or second degree murder because Roeder’s act was premeditated, he was not acting in defense of an immediate threat to life.<\/p>\n

Indeed Mr. Roeder, a white separatist who came to Jesus one day in 1992 watching Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” testified that he had been planning Dr. Tiller’s death for\u00a017 years. He had considered cutting off the doctor’s hands, but then decided Tiller could continue to teach, so he must die. Roeder showed no remorse, and after the fact, jurors said that his testimony gave them no recourse. The jury foreman said abortion per se, played no part in their decision, although the tightened security that surrounded the trial made the whole process surreal. The constraints of the legal system won this round.<\/p>\n

But what if? What if the defense had been more persuasive in convincing the jurors that “an unreasonable but honest belief” was all it took to get someone off the hook for murder? Couldn’t such a defense have been applied to the Ft. Hood incident? Hasan was convinced that he was acting to save Muslims from being murdered by the American military. And couldn’t all the terrorists around the globe benefit from such a defense? Assassins everywhere could plead their sincerity, hoping to win their freedom. And — lest we forget — this nation used just such a justification when it went to war twice in the last decade.<\/p>\n

Sincere belief in one’s cause can’t be the whole of a defense against taking another person’s life — except in these extraordinary times, belief has turned rationality on its head. I read recently that England’s academia is coming down hard on creationism; the evangelical movement sides with Muslim fundamentalism in this instance and seems to be growing disproportionately in secular Europe.<\/p>\n

This is the legacy of Pluto in Sagittarius — the ‘all or nothing at all’ radicalism that still echoes around us and, despite our shift of focus to corporatism and economic wobble, religion continues to impede political progress. In the US, choice is at the core of the culture war and has played a major role in the failure of healthcare reform. Irrationality is still alive and well in politics, in our personal lives and certainly in Kansas. God\/dess bless the Roeder jury for sticking to the rule of law — but with this case, we find ourselves still skidding around on the slippery slope.<\/p>\n

I happened to have the television set on Court TV when the decision was announced. The courtroom was full of security, beefed up by a prudent Wichita police presence, in full force outside, keeping an eye on the activists. Like it or not, when a movement feels justified in killing to make their point, we’re dealing with terrorism — even if they’re our neighbor.<\/p>\n

The GOP howl over trials for terrorists in our nation’s courts refuses to acknowledge this fact. We have home-grown problems here, our share of radicals and wing nuts; too many of them in the Republican base. If Wichita can manage this trial, New York City can get its act together for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,<\/a> and if American justice IS just, there’s no real argument to prevent it. Too bad KSM isn’t a Republican — then he’d get his day in court.<\/p>\n

Jude<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[480,29,1644,52,1360,1645],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}