Roeder guilty of first-degree murder of Kansas abortion doctor

The man who shot Dr. George Tiller in the foyer of the church where Tiller was working as an usher has been convicted of murder. It took the jury a mere 37 minutes to decide.

Abortion is a contentious issue. While most people agree that abortion is not a desirable solution to many problems, just a regrettable one, there are people who see it differently and who think that all life must be protected at all cost. This position is biologically an untenable one and in practice they are limited to condemning voluntary abortion of fertilized human egg cells and their further developed stages. Some (mainly US) Christians think that abortion must be prevented at all costs, even if this endangers the life of the mother, even if it means killing the people who are performing abortions. They see it as their religious duty to kill people who perform abortions because they want to protect the unborn (potential) human that cannot fend for itself. The United States is the world's first secular country and as such, there is -at least in theory- a strict separation between religion and government. Freedom of and from religion is all but absolute. However, with human ethics evolving, religious freedom is slowly shrinking. It is, for example, no longer considered acceptable to have slaves, to have several wives, or to murder, even when one's god allows or demands it. This makes the balance between religious freedom and the ethical requirements of an ever-evolving secular state a tricky one, and the Washington Post reports that both District Judge Warren Wilbert and the prosecutors in this case were well aware of this situation, which is why they had carefully avoided the subject of abortion and concentrated on the specifics of the shooting itself. Judge Wilbert did allow Scott Roeder to talk about his views on the subject, because these were considered integral to the case his lawyers were making. Dr. Tiller was not uncontroversial in abortion circles either, because he was one of the few people who still practice late-term abortion, a practice that is now nearly universally avoided. He was under investigation for that reason. Roeder's lawyers had built a case in the hopes that they would be able to show that Roeder honestly, though unreasonably, believed that deadly force was necessary to protect the unborn from Dr. Tiller. This would have led to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. Scott Roeder had confessed both publicly before the trial and on the witness stand during the trial that he shot Dr. Tiller in the head, because he thought that Dr. Tiller posed an immediate threat to the lives of these unborn children. Nevertheless, after hearing Roeder's side of the story, Judge Wilbert ruled that he and his lawyers had failed to make their case and that such a verdict should not be considered by the jury. It took the jury no longer than 37 minutes to declare Scott Roeder guilty of premeditated, first-degree murder of Dr. Tiller on the 31 May 2009. He was also convicted of aggravated assault because he pointed a gun at two ushers after he shot Dr. Tiller at the church in Wichita. His sentencing is scheduled for March 9, 2010, when he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Nola Foulston, the prosecutor, said that she will try to obtain a "Hard 50" sentence. This would mean that Roeder would be required to serve at least 50 years behind bars before he could be considered for parole. Roeder, 51, showed no visible reaction while he was listening to the reading of the verdict and the jurors while they were confirming the verdict.