Judge Rejects Necessity Defense of Killer of Abortion Doctor

Necessity sometimes can trump the Constitution. It was designed to save lives, and not to allow individuals to impose a policy change on their own. The judge may have gotten his additional evidence had the homicide taken place during the abortion of a viable fetus. The killer should have researched the law. No attorney could have advised him on setting up the defense of a homicide better.

From USA Today, " A judge ruled Tuesday that Kansas law doesn't allow a so-called "necessity defense" in the trial of a man charged with killing one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.

The decision was another blow to lawyers for 51-year-old Scott Roeder, who has confessed to shooting Dr. George Tiller on May 31 and says it was necessary to save "unborn children." Roeder listened intently, at times twiddling his thumbs nervously under the defense table, as the judge gave a lengthy recitation of case precedents that mostly undermined that contention.

In his ruling, Judge Warren Wilbert cited a 1993 criminal trespassing case involving an abortion clinic in which the Kansas Supreme Court said that allowing a person's personal beliefs to justify criminal activity to stop a law-abiding citizen from exercising his rights would "not only lead to chaos but would be tantamount to sanctioning anarchy."

But he noted that the 1993 case dealt only with a property rights issue, whereas the case involving Roeder has elevated the argument to whether it is justified to take one life for another.

"That is certainly not a position I want to be in -- because I am not God," Wilbert said.

The judge said he has heard enough evidence to anticipate what might be presented at trial. He noted abortion is legal and told attorneys he found it difficult to consider the shooting of Tiller in the back of a church on a Sunday morning, with no overt act by Tiller himself, as an act spurred by an imminent threat of death or bodily harm."