Doctor-killing zealots hold an online fund-raiser for the assassin of Dr. Tiller -- in hopes of using "necessity" defense
By David Neiwert Tuesday Oct 27, 2009 2:00pm
Judy Thomas in the Kansas City Star has an amazing piece (picked up by MSNBC) about the online fund-raiser being planned for Scott Roeder, the right-wing extremist who shot Dr. George Tiller in the head in his church:
An Army of God manual. A prison cookbook compiled by a woman doing time for abortion clinic bombings and arsons. An autographed bullhorn.
These are among the items that abortion foes plan to auction on eBay and other Web sites in a fundraiser for Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man charged with killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.
“This is unique,” said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who will sign the bullhorn. “Nobody’s ever done this before. The goal is that everybody makes money for Scott Roeder’s defense.”
One abortion-rights leader called the auction deplorable and said it could lead to more violence.
“The network of extremists promoting and defending the murder of doctors is contributing to escalating threats against clinics and doctors across the country,” said Kathy Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Roeder, charged with first-degree murder in the May 31 shooting of Tiller, is scheduled to go to trial in January.
Perhaps even more appalling is the line of defense they hope to pursue in the courts with this money:
Leach and others would like to help Roeder hire a lawyer to present what is known as a necessity defense. That strategy would argue that Tiller was killed to prevent a greater harm — killing babies. Other anti-abortion activists charged with violent crimes have tried to use such a defense but with little success.
Yeah, let's legalize killing abortion doctors. Sounds like a job for Antonin Scalia. One can only hope this defense has zero success, as it has in the past.
Rachel Maddow also featured a segment on this story last night on her MSNBC show, including an interview with the attorney for Tiller's family, who says he'll move to have the court attach any funds they raise on Roeder's behalf:
Joining us now is Lee Thompson. He's an attorney who represented the late Dr. George Tiller for 16 years. He's currently the attorney for Dr. Tiller's widow and the doctor's estate.
Mr. Thompson, thanks very much for coming on this show.
LEE THOMPSON, ATTORNEY FOR DR. GEORGE TILLER'S WIDOW: Thank you for having me.
MADDOW: First, I'll just ask for your reaction or the reaction of Dr.
Tiller's family to this planned fundraising effort for Mr. Roeder.
THOMPSON: Well, obviously, we believe that this is nothing more than a reprehensible publicity stunt that is fostered by the same people trying to sell the same publications that generated the climate of hatred and fear that led to Dr. Tiller's murder. Fortunately, it's probably also a useless exercise, because the drawings and other materials from criminals would generate funds that ought to be attached by the Kansas victim compensation fund under our Son of Sam Law.
So obviously, if this goes ahead, we'll be asking the attorney general of Kansas to simply attach whatever funds and use them to help other victims of crimes.
MADDOW: Separate from the question of fundraising or, as you say, it would in this case probably be attempted fundraising, how present are your concerns about more violence coming from the radical anti-abortion movement? Certainly, it is troubling to see Mr. Roeder as he sits there charged with first degree murder in Dr. Tiller's death to see him celebrated in this way.
THOMPSON: Absolutely. And I think it's obvious, when you look at these very materials, that it's the rhetoric that was promoted by these groups that has led to violence. The handbook of the Army of God, for example, had hints on gluing locks at abortion clinics, which Roeder did in Kansas City; hints and directions on flooding clinic roofs, which they did to Dr. Tiller's clinic in Wichita; bombing instructions and other violent directions that all led to that climate that made people think it was OK to do this.
They also suggested, I think, that it was justified and, thus, gave the impression that there was some justification, a defense which the law has routinely rejected.
MADDOW: Since Dr. Tiller's murder, clearly, the very far fringe, the violent fringe of the anti-abortion movement, has decided to celebrate Mr. Roeder. The pro-choice movement and I think a lot of centrists who see themselves as allied with this issue at all before Dr. Tiller's murder, have also organized in the wake of the assassination and I think tried to change minds and tried to change the climate in the country in the wake of that assassination-what's been your reaction to the overall way in which Dr. Tiller's murder has affected the country on both sides?
THOMPSON: Well, obviously, any attempt to use it to promote anti-abortion feelings is awful. It is sick. It is the worst possible thing that could be done.
This was a criminal act. It was a premeditated act. And anything that says it was OK or good is simply wrong.
Dr. Tiller provided a service that provided constitutionally protected rights for his patients. And it's extremely disturbing that the climate of fear is still being generated. Whether or not it should be used to promote the pro-choice approach is something that I'll leave up to those who are doing it. I think the family would just assume people remember Dr. Tiller for the service he gave to women over a long and distinguished career.
MADDOW: Mr. Thompson, what happens next in the case of Scott Roeder? I wonder if, legally, you believe that we can conclude from this fundraising effort that he's going to try to put abortion rights on trial, that he'll try to put the memory of Dr. Tiller on trial in his own defense?
THOMPSON: Well, they say the fundraiser is to hire an attorney to advance what's called the necessity defense, a justification for some violent act. But that's been routinely rejected by virtually every court and certainly been rejected by the supreme court of Kansas, which in 1993, in an abortion case, said, to permit such a defense would invite chaos and perhaps could lead ultimately to anarchy.
So, I can't imagine that any judge sitting in Wichita, Kansas, would go against the Kansas Supreme Court on that issue. I think that we really don't see that sort of publicity stunt working in Kansas courts very often. And I believe-with everything I hold dear-that that will be the case in this case.
MADDOW: Lee Thompson, attorney for Dr. George Tiller's widow and Dr. Tiller's estate-I know this has been an upsetting turn of events both for you and Dr. Tiller's family, thanks for being willing to talk to us about it tonight.
THOMPSON: Appreciate you having us. Thank you.
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############# without benefit of a trial...does he really want to go there?
How about the women who will die from complications at birth?
I just recently learned that other "accepted" (ahem!) religions take on the abortion issue as a case by case decision to be made. How enlightened! Not every social issue can be reduced down to a simple black/white, right/wrong answer except by the basest and rudimentary thinkers. If you can call it thinking.
From the law. The law says you can't kill people who aren't breaking the law. It's pretty straightforward that way.
even if they are breaking the law.
If they are breaking into your house and you feel your life is threatened, you can legally kill them. Now, if it can be proven that your life wasn't threatened (like they were running out of the house and you shot them in the back 6 times), then you're on the hook for murder.
... lack of penalty does not equal condoning.
I believe in those cases, it ends up being who broke the law "the most" but there is usually a trial to declare wether or not the killing was done in self defense.
It's up to the prosecutor (or sometimes a grand jury) to decided if charges are brought up at all. And it would all be dependent on underlying state laws about "self defense". The exact same set of circumstances could have different outcomes from state to state.
For example, I believe in Texas, you've got lots more leeway to kill than in most other states. And it Florida, sometime in the last couple of years, enacted a "Shoot First" law.
... at least in Cali, from what some "lawyering" friends told me, the state don't have the discretion to not prosecute in cases involving loss of life. Regardless of wether it was in self defense or not, it can only be determined after judicial process (it doesn't necessarily involve a trial by jury though, so it could be a quick and expedite review by a judge).
Although I am not surprised to read about texas being so lax.
I remembered Florida's law, apparently it has spread to at least another 14 states. Looked it up and found this ....
http://www.alternet.org/story/59584/
Florida's "Shoot First" Law Reflects Crazy Ideology of Preemption
... the bible belt never ceases to amaze me in their capacity for diminish my faith in humanity.
That sentence had a lot of moving parts.
;-)
batteries and commas not included...
Present participle.
…diminishing my faith…: Present Participle
The diminishing of the Republican party: Gerund
Cheers from the Grammar Police. ;)
Indeed I was using it as a verb not a noun...
Gerund particle? ;-)
I'll write it 100 times on the chalkboard.
and go unpunished. And yet Texas kills more people through capital punishment than any other state. What a big old bunch of contradictions them cowboys are. Especially the ones born in Connecticut.
AND get an apology, a very public one! :]
If we can't shoot negros when we feel powerless, then the terrorists have won!
Dick Cheney's gun is colorblind that way... for it discriminates not based on the gender, sexual orientation, or racial make up of its target!
Very progressive of Dick's gun.
Palin/Dick's Gun 2012!
.
Palin at the other end of Dick's gun 2009
.
Somewhere in this country, this statement makes sense to a whole bunch of people. You can't make this shit up!
Especially if you are Rick Perry! Execute, without reading new evidence from 3 fire marshalls, stating fire was not set. Kill him anyway, then remove board members that would oversee the evidence of possible misconduct, and replace with a buddy. Republican STRATEGERIE" at it's best!
through the defense of this killer and turn him into a martyr.
someone to speak for their cause. She's going to sign a bullhorn? Wow. How compelling.
.
!
I have to think there's this raging demand for items she's signed, ha.
To add to their collections of anti-abortion memorabilia.
It seems that Kansas has a 'Son of Sam' Law that prevents items associated with a crime from being auctioned or sold. The proceeds of such a sale would be taken by the state and added to the victims compensation fund. So the solution to this is simple - bid on the items and drive-up the price! Victims of crime in Kansas will get more money that way!
I'm sure Dr. Tiller's estate is already putting some cash together to buy these items.....
I think the higher price is the kind of PR these vigilantes would love. as much as it would help victims, I think the pr value is a price we need to drive down. imho.
nice idea though :)
and put their picture and address info in a website. What is good for the goose victim must be also apply to the murderous gander.
but won't that take away their first amendment rights to do whatever they want anonymously? /s
to paint a big target on abortion doctors by putting their info on the interweb. Or was I misinformed when I was told that the US constitution applies to all citizens, not just right wing insanely belligerent wackos?
Colbert did a piece on Wash State's equal on everything except marriage law. People who sign public anti-gay petitions want to be allowed to do so privately...so colbert says, yeah, they have the right to move into the closet that the gays just abandoned.
I'm calling out the tendency of lowinfo, weak battery thinkers to yell First Amendment, whenever they want to do something completely odious but do so anonymously. sleazy and cowardly.
If the Kansas Supreme Court said permitting the necessity defense would encourage anarchy, can we call these extreme "right-to-lifers" (the lives THE RIGHT TO LIFERS deem important to save) anarchists now? Or would terrorists be more appropriate?
Considering it's almost assured that these assholes will kill more doctors, I suppose one could use the "necessity defense" to justify killing "right-to-life" wackos, right, Ms. Dimwiddie?
These people are worse than the Manson family.
I would be a little surprised if EBay would allow this to transpire, but then again nothing really amazes me any more. One could always bid on the items drive the price into the galaxy, win, and then refuse to pay based on moral convictions.
These non-religious, hate monguering, murderous, sick Reslug fuckers, are all certainly going to hell.
sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.
They are pretty religious...
murderers, and pompous bigoted gas bags to do his dirty work. He sounds familiar, but I just can't put my finger on his name.
non spiritual, and not a scintilla of Christ's love among the lot of them.
I'M not religious. Their excess of religion makes them guilty of extreme piety.
they'd be pretty shocked if they got around to reading the original.
omnipotent, why does he need help from the likes of them--or anyone? Maybe THAT is the sin that can't be forgiven--acting like your god is weak.
you're trying to mix common sense and logic with religion.
Although you gotta admit the marketing progress of Christianity.
was I thinking. I am soooo dumb.
Their GAWD has issues with foreskins too.
I have no idea why GAWD didn't just handle that to begin with.
:)
once he had his kid, he mellowed big time.
just remember, god gave us the brain for aesthetic purposes only.
inward, right?
... and also for keeping all that hair in place, esp. if you are a woman. In which case it is a double offense if you dare use that grey matter for thinking.
I didn't know grey counted for anything? I don't get it? You're scaring me.
I see the local priest set you straight.
It is too late for me, I dared using my brain... and doing all that thinking. God has punished me with my first graying hairs. Let that serve you as a warning...
everything he tells me to do.
not an original thought in the lot.
thanks Dick Wolf, for giving these Idiots an idea.
It was "ripped from the headlines," now it's ripped from episodic tee vee.
Dignity
was very good.
too in love with himself...
.
That shit-fuck has supporters??
didn't you get the memo??? he's a big hero who has saved thousands, nay, millions of yet to be conceived precious babies.
to be here on earth, wouldn't he just recycle an aborted one? Is "recycled" a bad work to use when talking to or about a wing-nut? Oops. A faux pas. Pardon moi!!
they all look like child molesters, all of them no exception.
So me thinks these murders are more a case of perverts protecting their future "customer" base, than the end result of an extreme belief in the sanctity of life via murder.
!
will end up in a brown skinned body in a non-xtian nation.
Tell all of his supporters to stop eating eggs.
For obvious reasons.
Isn't raising funds to hire a hit man illegal? I think so.
!
Someone should buy all this stuff and put it in a Domestic Terrorism Museum.
OK. I just threw up in my mouth a little. These sick fucks all need to be locked up in jail or a mental health institution.
toward finally having a death penalty for male masturbation, or using a condom, or being gay, or anything that doesn't cram a sperm into an ovum.
anti-choicers are nothing if not misogynist, and a few of the things that would probably be criminalized first would be menstruation, menopause, and lesbianism. But I get what you mean.
The Handmaid's Tale
to read, as soon as I finish the art history book I'm reading right now...
Richardson and Robert Duvall. It gave me a bit of a kick in the heart. Read first, watch afterwards.
:)
I love Margaret Atwood. Makes me think.
"a death penalty for. . ."
I think I'm in trouble!
I won't ask which offense against procreation you're referring to! ;)
They will have to run the auction on another site. eBay has denied the scheduled auction.
auction site that will get them the bidders they would on eBay, I would hope.
how long until they claim that it's Obama's fault? They won't be satisfied with the fact that the auction is in the poorest of taste.
Find the auctions and flag them as listing violations
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/27/ap/...
But that's a good action to take if the terrorists are stubborn and an auction somehow makes it onto the site anyway!
Why should the zealots stop at the abortion doctors? Could not the same justification be used to kill every mother leaving an abortion clinic? Every father who let their child be aborted? Every nurse that handed out a RU-486? Every landlord who owns a building being leased by a women’s clinic? Each taxi driver giving ride toward murder? Kill them all! Their lives are all meaningless – once they condone abortion which is called murder. Complicit all. Death for death. Mayhem for decency. In the name of Christ, amen.
Remember that the inquisition was not only allowed, but encouraged by the church followers because your everlasting soul is more important than your brief bodily stint here on Earth. Better that you survive in heaven than be permitted to suffer here. So die, all who believe differently than the zealots. Kill first, and justify it in Heaven.
----------------------------------------------
...what a sad bunch of people.
Thought I would look around eBay to see how well they are doing keeping this garbage off the site.
Searching "Scott Roeder" turns up nothing, "Army of God" turns up your garden-variety Christian martial allusions (but nothing specific to the anti-abortion group) and merch for the band Lamb of God which has nothing to do with abortion or fundie religion at all. "Regina Dinwiddie" turns up nothing, and "Shelley Shannon" turns up unrelated children's books. And "George Tiller" turns up unrelated garden tools and a ceramic title portrait of him said to have been created in "loving memory" of Dr. Tiller.
So, looks like they're keeping their word.
...the name Bill O'Reilly continually comes up as part of the defense's argument, and the media takes that and runs with it.
Am I dreaming? ;)
Billo's persecution complex, but who cares! ;)
... at the wrong end of the RICO statute. It was created for precisely this purpose (despite any rhetoric you may read about it), government lawyers were tired of being outgunned by high priced mouthpieces paid for by other members of the mob. It is a pretty draconian thing so I would advise supporters of this murderer to think twice before getting involved.
It is a difficult enough thing when you are arguing that the guy is innocent (try contributing to the defense fund for an accused terrorist) but when you admit that he is guity and applaud his actions, you are smack dab in the middle of a criminal enterprise. Anyone who bids on these items had better have a good lawyer -- not the one who came up with the imaginary "greater evil" defense.
Can you believe the gall? Some ass in one of my college courses put forth this thing of beauty: If a pregnant woman had to be killed by a doctor in order to save an unborn child, then she should be killed. The child, an unknown quantity, was, in his opinion, superior. I asked him if he would think differently if the pregnant woman had three other children at home who needed her to raise them, and he said that would not make a difference. Needless to say, he never got a date throughout his college years. I hope he didn't get one afterward, either. These people are demented.
Sounds like a potential pedophile.
They need to use some of that money for hair pieces.
this would be the perfect thread to godwin...
Believe it or not, this is relevant to the topic. I don't watch much TV. I have no cable and live on the edge of a hill so that I can't get reception. But I still watch a few shows on the Internet, Law and Order being one of them. The last episode was based on the case of the guy that killed Tiller. But it really made me f*ing crazy because they bent over backward to make it "fair and balanced" by portraying the abortion doctor as someone who at one point while aborting a baby delivered a kid that was still alive and then killed it. It made me so angry because I don't think any real abortion doctor would never do that, if not for ethical reasons for purely practical ones, worrying about being sued or losing his license. It seemed like a metaphor for why this whole country is so fucked up, that we bend over to accomodate the homophobes and misogynists and war mongers.
practice a specific medical specialty, can I murder someone who practices any medical specialty? Like podiatrists? How about someone who might one day become a doctor or dentist?
righties, the clan, pro lifers, sean hannity, glen beck, all come from the same cut of certifiable snake pit crazy.
Throw this mentally damaged psychotic waste of a human in prison .... and then go after cowards like Randall Terry for instigating murder while hiding behind a fake facade of legitimacy .... Terry belongs in jail as well.
I think they can attach any earnings by the weirdos having the fund raiser on-line.
I know they did with people who were selling souvenirs online of items belonging to Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.
we can then argue it is through necessity that we have to kill the doctor killers before they kill doctors.
because there's no fucking way, that someone this stupid actually has a name that captures her moronic grandeur in such dickensian perfection. i figure that these fascist clowns got together and said, look, let's come up w/ some really idiotic names, so idiotic that we can't be parodied. you, over there, your name is dinwittie, and you, over there, you'll go by the name nackernips, and joe, how about, fuddsworth? okay, let's go do "god's" work.
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