It took a Kansas jury on Friday just 37 minutes to find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated assault in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller.
The prosecution said all along that this was a clear-cut murder case, and the defendant even admitted the crime. The defense wanted the jury to consider a voluntary manslaughter charge, which carries a much lighter sentence than murder. But the judge ruled against that.
Roeder testified that he believed abortion was murder and said he needed to stop it by killing Tiller, one of the few doctors who provided abortions later in pregnancy. Roeder did not deny any of the facts surrounding the May 31 shooting.
Kim Parker, one of the prosecutors, says she hoped the judge’s decision to not allow the jury to consider second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter resonated.
“Hopefully it sends a clear message that this type of conduct is clearly not justified under the law,” Parker said. “There is no place for this. There are no medals to be given for those who violate the rules.”
NPR – Jan. 29. 2010:
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a hero…
A scum-sucking, superstitious coward.
Throw away the key!
He’ll end up on the post-birth abortion list in Kansas. Hopefully they’ll hire an abortion doctor to give him the lethal injection.
#2:
Why is he superstitious?
Glad to see some forms of justice and rule of law are still true in this country.
Its ok for women to murder little people. I agree with that. Its not ok to kill someone who aids in the permissable murder of little people.
There are people serving life sentences for LSD, Marijuana, Ecstacy, Cocaine, Heroin. Most of the time these dealers never killed anyone. The doctor murders little people and he gets a check.
My mom says its not murder its just a fetus. She is a brain washed lefty. I support a womans right to murder her young.
So, when he gets the death penalty, are all the pro-choice/anti-capital punishment folks going to protest his execution?
Why the exclamation point in the headline? The guy only had about 50 eyewitnesses and confessed. It was pretty much a sure thing. I hope he enjoys being repeatedly ass raped in prison. That will give him something to pray about.
@algoreisacrook – If your magic invisible man in the sky exists, he hates you as much as I do.
Way to go “little people murder is kewl” — I’d bet you beat your wife and consider her property.
It’s a woman’s body, a woman’s decision.
Your dick can’t be part of somebody else’s equation. So sheath it and sit the f down.
he killed man and got what he deserved what is the story here ?
so what if the man he murdered killed hundreds if not thousands of human infants in the womb 2 wrongs don’t make a right
Hey Flip,
“It’s a woman’s body, a woman’s decision.”
Can you be so sure? What the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court taketh away.
Scalia: Abortion Rights Not Constitutional
Antonin Scalia on Abortion
Don’t think Scalia is alone on this, specially after Obama’s idiotic dis of the Supreme Court.
I say spend your time, energy and passion helping the living.
Hope he dies in jail.
#6, #10
Do you support the right for people to masturbate? After all, that’s murder too right? What about fertilized eggs? Is that murder? What about dirty thoughts?
Most reasonable people will recognize that destroying a fertilized egg is not murder and that killing a child moments before it comes out of the womb is. There are therefore two fundamental questions:
1. When exactly does biological goo become a human? In short, when, precisely, does life begin?
2. If there is no reasonable answer to question #1, should the government have the authority to impose the morality of a minority onto the majority? Most people would agree that they should not have this authority and thus abortion should be legal and left up to the woman. Now, that said, I would agree that such a decision should lie with the States and not the Federal government but that is a separate discussion.
“Now, that said, I would agree that such a decision should lie with the States and not the Federal government but that is a separate discussion.”
Nailed it.
You shouldn’t be called courageous if you get away with it. Perhaps he thought he would suffer no punishment. Doing something you think is right, even if it suffers a large punishment, that can be considered courageous.
#14:
“If there is no reasonable answer to question #1”
The reasonable answer is to err on the side of caution, and consider abortion murder.
thought experiment:
Consider a sealed, opaque box, and a shotgun embedded halfway in the side of the box. i.e., the trigger outside of the box, and the barrel inside the box.
If you’re told there’s a slight chance a person may be in the box, do you pull the trigger?
If you pull the trigger, and it turns out there was a person in the box, are you guilty of murder?
Ah_Yes, Scalia would never have allowed a woman (never mind a black) to vote. I’d imagine that he thinks of women a chattel as I suspect “little people murder is kewl” does.
If you had a uterus and were knocked up I’m willing to guess you’d grab the nearest coat hanger.
Your body your decision.
Minute it’s no longer your body you loose the ability to make choices. Plain. Simple.
Since God went to the trouble of writing it down Roeder should have known that no one is above the crime of murder.
Much better to have gone after Tillers abortion hand with a hammer.
“2 wrongs don’t make a right” nope but three left do. Oh, hope he enjoys prison.
#17
“If there is no reasonable answer to question #1″
The reasonable answer is to err on the side of caution, and consider abortion murder.
Completely disagree. The reasonable answer is to err on the side of liberty. It is not even remotely clear that we are talking about murder. Said another way, do not make something criminal unless you are positive it is abrogation of rights. Using your logic, we should ban masturbation because it “might” be murder. We should ban the destruction of fertilized eggs because they “might” be murder and so on.
Your thought experiment is a strawman. Even so, let’s modify the conditions a bit. Same setup, however, if you do NOT pull trigger there is a very high probability that you will die. Further, you are afforded the opportunity to investigate the box to verify it does not, as far as you are concerned, contain another human, however there is no way to be 100% positive. Now do you pull the trigger? I think most people would say that it depends on the person to whom the choice is presented and as such, we should not make something illegal to which there is great dissent as to whether it is criminal
#19
So, let me see if I have this straight. Killing a human is bad, but permanently mutilating a person such that you take away their livelihood is hunky dory and should be legal?! You can hack a person up as long as they live through the process?
Oddly, I didn’t know the judge had that authority.
The rest was a given.
#21:
“Completely disagree. The reasonable answer is to err on the side of liberty. It is not even remotely clear that we are talking about murder.”
It’s not clear if we’re talking about murder, because there isn’t any scientific consensus on when a fetus becomes human. There *has* to be a point when a fetus transitions to being human, with the absolute endpoints being fertilization and birth.
and since just most people believe it’s somewhere in between…
We don’t know when that point is. It might be something we can’t ever pinpoint. If that’s true, then some abortions are murder, some are not, and we don’t know which ones.
Logically, there are *always some* abortions that are murder, unless you believe a fetus isn’t human until it’s birthed.
Liberty is important. Murder is the ultimate crime against liberty, because it deprives another person of life. In defense of liberty, or maybe for some other reason, our society generally considers murder to be the ultimate crime.
It doesn’t follow logically how permitting abortion doesn’t also result in permitting some murders. So, we should err on the side of not accidentally committing murder.
Unless we believe that some people’s freedoms are worth some other people’s lives.
#21:
“let’s modify the conditions a bit. Same setup, however, if you do NOT pull trigger there is a very high probability that you will die.”
I don’t believe it’s right to kill another person simply to save myself.
#24
There *has* to be a point when a fetus transitions to being human, with the absolute endpoints being fertilization and birth.
I completely agree. The catch is that, given what you said, no person or body can make the determination of when it is a human and when it is not other than the woman and her doctor. They are the only ones in a position to make that judgment.
If that’s true, then some abortions are murder, some are not, and we don’t know which ones.
That is an inaccurate way of stating the issue. Some people believe that some abortions, which the woman felt was not murder, actually was murder and visa versa. That will always be true. Some fanatics will think that destroying fertilized eggs is murder. Some loons will think that aborting just before birth is not murder. The whole point is that there is a continuum of opinion and, given that, we shouldn’t place limits on liberty with such a degree of dissension.
Liberty is important. Murder is the ultimate crime against liberty, because it deprives another person of life
This is true only when the act in question is deemed to be murder. Death at the hands of self defense or self preservation is not considered a deprivation of liberty but a defense of it.
The fundamental issue with which you are grappling is that your opinion about what is considered a life, even a potential life, is far from universal. As difficult as it is for you to accept, some people, for example, do not consider a fetus during the second trimester to be a human. Therefore, it is not a human life and its destruction is as morally consequential as killing bacteria. Many disagree and that is the point. With so much disagreement, it is far better to err on the side of liberty than err on the side of a minority opinion.
#25
I don’t believe it’s right to kill another person simply to save myself.
The operative words are “I don’t believe” and “kill another person”. It is your belief that said fetus is a person. If you did not think said fetus was a person, then its destruction would have no moral consequence.
#14 your logic is flawed masturbation does not create a unique human genome like is in a fetus/ unborn child .
All you poor abortion people like to call a fetus a lump of cells, but it is not. With genetic mapping now available you can sample that so called mass of tissue and prove that it is a unique human being and yes I believe that the fertilized egg is a human and should be treated as such,If you are doing in vetro you place multiple eggs and let nature take its course but those not placed are in my mind still human being as their unique genetic code shows them to be and should be treated as such.
#24, #26, not very scientific. They can make a determination that a human fetus is in fact human.
#27
I believe that the fertilized egg is a human
I obviously disagree. So, we have a standoff between the moral interpretation of a minority (those that believe a fertilized egg is a human being) and those that do not. In such a situation, the dispassionate solution is to rule in the favor of individual choice and the individual’s morality.
#28
You are playing games with terminology. Technically, a hair from head is human in that it is derived from a human being. That is far different than claiming that said hair is a sentient being with rights.
From a certain slightly warped point of view, it’s okay to kill a professional killer. Though I wouldn’t kill an abortion doctor if given a chance, I am certain he saved a number of children by shooting this bastard. To get a mental handle on this messed-up situation- evil goes hand-in-hand with evil. Okay to kill babies, okay to kill their killer. I’m sure the doctor’s family members weep for him, but people wept for Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler, too.
Welcome to our dark new world.