Today, as jury selection continues in the Wichita, Kansas, courtroom where George Tiller’s alleged killer will be tried, I’m reminded of the Rodney King trial. It’s not that the crimes are parallel. It’s that there may be a similar role reversal taking place in these cases, wherein the victim becomes the criminal—the one on trial. Rodney King was not on trial during the Rodney King trial, but sometimes it seemed like he was. To some extent, that’s going to happen in many trials, since cruelty is measured against provocation. But now we have another interesting case: the George Tiller trial, George Tiller being the doctor who was shot in the face at church by alleged premeditated murderer Scott Roeder, who is essentially an anti-abortion terrorist.
What’s been stunning is reporting that there may be a loophole in Kansas state law that protects terrorists—legally, in this case, those who kill for ideological reasons having to do with their “unreasonable but honest belief” that they are saving lives—from the longer sentences associated with first-degree murder.
In this way, George Tiller would officially be on trial along with Scott Roeder. The jury could, in the end, have the option of convicting Roeder not of murder but of manslaughter. The interpretation of the Kansas law by Judge Warren Wilbert, according to Slate writer Emily Bazelon, is unnecessarily and dangerously expansive, not to mention that the law doesn’t make sense in the first place:
Judge Wilbert seems to think that Roeder’s “unreasonable but honest belief” can constitute manslaughter if he can show that he was trying to forestall deaths that were imminent. This suggests that Roeder’s act wasn’t murder if, for example, Roeder knew the doctor was scheduled to perform an abortion within—what time frame? Tiller was killed in church on a Sunday. How imminent could Roeder’s conception of harm have been? How can the law possibly turn on the answer to this cock-eyed question?
In reading up on how the Kansas Supreme Court has interpreted the “unreasonable but honest belief” part of the manslaughter statute, I don’t see support for Wilbert’s interpretation. To begin with, the imperfect self-defense is usually allowed only for unintentional killings.
Surely the Kansas appeals courts will set the judge straight if he doesn’t fix this himself by the trial’s end. But by then, harm will have been done. Scott Roeder will get to put on testimony about why he thought he was justified in killing Tiller. He will have a show trial in which he can present himself as a martyr to the cause of the unborn. Judge Wilbert has repeatedly insisted that he won’t let this trial become a trial about abortion. But that’s exactly where his ruling is taking us.
Get ready for a spectacle.
This trial is going to be so full of ridiculous bullshit.
If he’s a martyr, he should do everyone a favor and kill himself.
Oh this is so depressing.
A question of legal proceedings for all you lawyers out there: if Roeder gets off on first degree murder but convicted of manslaughter, how can that get reversed on appeal? Wouldn’t that be double jeopardy?
Is our only hope for justice then for the jury to reject this line of reasoning as a group (hah!) or for a hung jury?
I wonder if the same tortured logic could be used to get away with murdering homos. You know, to protect children from getting molested and so on.
By that logic, could we kill all those that will vote against the health-care bill because without proper health care 40,000 to 50,000 will die this year?
Scott Roeder=John Brown
While the “unreasonable but honest belief” loophole is bullshit, I’m generally in favor of juries having the option to convict a killer of manslaughter instead of murder rather than letting said killer off scott free for all time.
i will be so depressed if he gets manslaughter for this reason.
So, if someone kills Roeder, could they use the same line of defense – killing him to protect other doctors from getting killed by him?