Killing of anti-abortion protester has both sides questioning violence

Already, there are small signs that common ground is being found regarding the use of violence, no matter where it’s directed.

By Mark Guarino | Contributor/ September 12, 2009 edition

CHICAGO

The murder of an anti-abortion protester outside Detroit Friday is forcing both sides of the abortion issue to address their traditional roles in the long-standing debate.

James Pouillon, a local man known in the community for his 20-year street protests aimed at ending abortion, was shot and killed outside a high school in suburban Owosso early Friday morning while staging his usual protest involving large photos of mutilated fetuses.

Within hours police named a suspect: Harlan James Drake. Mr. Drake killed two people that day, but the death of Mr. Pouillon is drawing attention because it is the first abortion-related murder since the May shooting death of Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita, Kan. physician who performed abortions, in the foyer of a Catholic church. A staunch anti-abortion advocate was charged.

Since news of the shootings broke Friday, national organizations representing both the anti-abortion and abortion rights movements released statements to frame the murder against data — either aborted fetuses or assassinated medical personnel — they say is essential in understanding how their side deals with violence or the threat of violence every day.

Shaun Kenney, executive director of the American Life League in Washington, one of the nation’s largest pro-life organizations, called Pouillon a “true pro-life hero” and said his murder on Sept. 11 was “a terrible irony” for bringing “to mind the 50 million innocent lives lost to abortion.”

On Saturday, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, condemned the murder and said the pro-choice side knows “all too well the chilling effect that shootings and other forms of violent intimidation have on people who have strongly held beliefs about this most personal issue.” The organization reports that eight abortion clinic workers in the US have been murdered since 1993.

Because the majority of violence surrounding the abortion issue usually involves threats or acts against clinics, resulting in federal and state protection laws, the murder of an anti-abortion advocate is reversing the traditional roles of both sides and, in that process, perhaps even forcing both to look at it with a new perspective.

Already, there are small signs that common ground is being found regarding the use of violence, no matter where it’s directed.

Keenan called Pouillon’s murder “senseless violence” and offered condolences to the families involved. Kenney said it wanted to “renew” its “call for peace and prayer as the only remedies for the culture of violence.”

Doug Levesque, the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church outside Owosso, says he is already sensing “a solidarity of spirit” among people in the city, population 15,000, who share different points of view on abortion.

“I think people are [saying] ‘this is just craziness’. There are so many other things we can do. We can argue, we can rally. It’s not worth shooting each other over,” he says.

Mr. Levesque says Pouillon attended his church “numerous times” over the past few years and was known as a “caustic” abortion protester who “would have been thrilled” to learn that his murder was considered the antithesis of the Tiller case.

After the Tiller case, Levesque says he wrote op-ed pieces to the local newspaper condemning the use of violence in the abortion debate, even though he personally agreed that Tiller’s efforts resulted in “cold-blooded murder.” He said Pouillon felt the same.

“Jim would say Dr. Tiller killed 60,000 babies but Jim would never say, ‘let’s kill somebody’,” says Levesque. “I think the pro-choicers are the same way when they say ‘we support women’s right but it’s not worth senseless violence’. Even Jim didn’t deserve that.”

Since the shootings, he says he is sensing people around Owosso are making efforts to “look into each others eyes” and find “a connection” rather than decamp. It can only happen “by living together.”

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FBI traces members of abortion murder suspect’s study group

By JUDY L. THOMAS

The Kansas City Star

They met in one another’s homes on Saturdays, their Sabbath, for potluck dinners and scripture study sessions.

Among the topics: The Old Testament, their Hebrew roots and the “secret societies” attempting to control government and culture.

Among the members: Scott Roeder, the Kansas City man accused of killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

As the investigation continues into whether Roeder acted alone in Tiller’s May 31 death, members of the study group have found themselves in the spotlight, showing up on the witness list for the prosecution and being interviewed by the FBI.

Even a rabbi at an Overland Park congregation of Messianic Jews has been questioned, although Roeder’s group broke away after some members were asked to leave the synagogue.

“People are trying to make something out of nothing,” said Michael Clayman, an attorney who was host for the group for a time in his Merriam home.

“It was like any other Bible study around town. It was a bunch of guys having spaghetti and meatballs, talking about philosophy. It wasn’t a bunch of Jim Jones people meeting or drinking Kool-Aid or plotting things. No cult, no nothing.”

The group does help explain the foundation of some of Roeder’s beliefs, which included distrust of government and opposition to abortion.

Those attending the study group describe themselves as Messianic Jews who, unlike mainstream Jews, believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Some people who call themselves Messianic Jews, such as Roeder, are not Jewish.

Messianic Jews observe many Jewish customs, including dietary laws and holidays.

In a recent interview, Roeder said he “had become a believer” around 1992.

“I converted, born again to Christianity,” he said. “I guess you could say Messianic, or turned to Jesus, Yeshua, as my Savior.” He said Messianic believers such as himself had gone “back to our Hebrew roots.”

Roeder said he preferred going to a study group instead of a more formal religious setting because “organized religion is 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations, which are businesses.”

“We stay away from them,” he said, adding that religious organizations receiving tax-exempt status become corrupt because they are beholden to the government.

Roeder and other members of the Bible study used to attend the Or HaOlam Messianic Congregation in Overland Park but split off, some said, because the leaders did not want to hear their talk about Freemasons and other “secret societies.”

They also didn’t approve of Or HaOlam being registered as a nonprofit corporation with the state of Kansas.

Rabbi Shmuel Wolkenfeld of the Or HaOlam congregation confirmed that Roeder and the others left over disagreements. Wolkenfeld said he hadn’t seen them for several years.

“We had such divisive conversations with them,” he said. “Scott became displeased with us because we were an incorporated Kansas charity.”

He said the group also espoused conspiracy theories — including an assertion that Prince Charles is the Antichrist — and that eventually, he and the elders had to “uninvite” two of Roeder’s friends.

“With Scott, we had a bunch of discussions, then he just disappeared,” he said. “I wish we could have helped him, but he had his own opinions.”

Wolkenfeld said the congregation was shocked by Tiller’s slaying.

“Our congregation is certainly pro-life,” he said. “So for something like that to happen is abhorrent. All it does is bring disgrace on the whole cause.”

Wolkenfeld said two Wichita police detectives paid him a visit after Tiller’s murder to ask about Roeder.

“What they said was they knew we had a history with him and they were looking for any possible lead,” he said.

After leaving Or HaOlam, the group began meeting on Saturday afternoons, first at Clayman’s house and most recently at an apartment in Westport that Roeder shared with another man.

The man asked not to be identified because he fears losing his job, saying he already had lost a new roommate who discovered the man’s ties to Roeder.

The man said the study group was suspended after Roeder’s arrest.

He said he last saw Roeder the day before Tiller was killed. Roeder told him that he was going to visit his family in Topeka and didn’t come home that night. The next day, he said, the FBI knocked on his door at 4:15 p.m. and started asking questions.

Agents took his home computer and laptop and also Roeder’s computer, he said, along with some Hebrew teaching tapes. He said he’s met with FBI agents five times since Tiller’s death.

Tim Parks, who was Roeder’s roommate for five years before Roeder lived with Clayman, said he attended some of the study group’s meetings. He said, however, that “I disagreed with a lot of that stuff.” Some of the beliefs, he said, were “kind of off the wall.”

“To me, it’s PFA theology,” he said. “Plucked from air.”

Parks said he isn’t convinced that Roeder killed Tiller.

“A bunch of us think he is being framed,” said Parks, who also has been interviewed by the FBI. “To me, the entire judicial system is suspect.”

Clayman said he met Roeder about two years ago while attending a different study group. He said Roeder lived with him for 11 months but moved out April 1 because he’d lost his job and wasn’t paying his rent.

Clayman said Roeder took the abortion issue to the extreme.

“Scott believed that the Bible was literal, the word of God,” he said. “Where he went astray was he had this crazy, fanatic doctrine that you could somehow justify killing somebody just because they were an abortion doctor.”

Clayman said Roeder talked often about his belief that killing an abortion doctor was an act of justifiable homicide.

” he said. “When he brought up that in theory — but he never did threaten anybody when I was around — I said, ‘How can you repay evil with evil?’

Clayman said investigators won’t find any conspiracy behind Tiller’s killing, especially among the members of the study group.

“A Bible study is studying the Bible,” he said. “We’d read from the Bible and say, ‘What do you think about that?’ Then we’d discuss it. We didn’t sit around and have sacrifices in the backyard.”

As for Roeder, Clayman said, “He’s going to be tried, and he’s going to try and do a dog-and-pony show in front of the media. He wants to tell the whole world. He’s a martyr, see? That’s what he wanted to be.”

Anti-Abortion Extremism

Doctor's Alleged Killer Had 'Sovereign' Ties

The man accused of fatally shooting Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller this spring has longstanding ties to antigovernment groups and radical anti-abortion activism.

Scott Roeder, 51, was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the May 31 assassination of Tiller, who was shot while serving as an usher at his church. Tiller, who in 1993 was shot in both arms by another anti-abortion protester, ran one of three clinics in the United States that provided late-term abortions.

Roeder was involved during the '90s with the so-called sovereign citizens movement. Sovereign citizens generally believe the government has no jurisdiction over them and often deluge courts with phony liens and other paperwork. Many of them also believe that only whites can be sovereigns, while blacks and others are mere "14th Amendment citizens" who must obey all government rules.

Police stopped Roeder in 1996 because he didn't have a valid license plate and instead was using a tag that declared he was a "sovereign" citizen who didn't have to obey the government. During a search of his car, police discovered bomb-making materials including gunpowder and a homemade fuse. He was found guilty of criminal use of explosives, but an appeals court ruled that the car had been improperly searched and overturned the conviction.

Dave Leach told reporters that Roeder had contributed to his newsletter, Prayer and Action News, which argues that killing abortion providers is justifiable. A former roommate told CNN that Roeder belonged to the "Army of God," whose website praises the killings and asserts that Tiller is now in hell. Roeder also made inflammatory posts to Operation Rescue, a Wichita-based group that long had tried to prevent Tiller from providing late-term abortions. In one 2007 post, Roeder wrote: "Tiller is the concentration camp 'Mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."

Roeder's family said he has suffered from bouts of mental illness.

Roeder may also have vandalized a Kansas City clinic shortly before he allegedly shot Tiller. A man repeating phrases such as "baby killer" was spotted using super glue to jam a door lock at the Aid for Women clinic the day before Tiller's death. He fled in a car with the same license plate as Roeder's vehicle.

Speaking with The Associated Press after his June arrest, Roeder said: "I know there are many other similar events planned around the country as long as abortion remains legal." He would not say if he was referring to killings.

Since 1977, eight U.S. abortion providers or their assistants or escorts have been killed, including Tiller, according to the National Abortion Federation. After the latest murder, Tiller's family said his clinic would not be reopened.

Justifiable homicide defense eyed in Roeder's case

By ROXANA HEGEMAN (AP) – 31 minutes ago

WICHITA, Kan. — The suspect in the killing of abortion provider George Tiller is in talks with a prominent attorney who represents anti-abortion protesters and has long advocated justifiable homicide as a legal defense in such cases.

Scott Roeder, 51, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and aggravated assault charges in the May 31 shooting death of Tiller in the foyer of his Wichita church. The Kansas City, Mo., man has refused to discuss his case, but he has told The Associated Press that Tiller's killing was justified to save "the lives of unborn children."

Roeder has co

urt-appointed defense attorneys, but he apparently has now turned to Michael Hirsh, the lawyer who represented Paul Hill on appeal for killing a Florida abortion provider and his bodyguard in 1994. Hill was executed in 2003 after the Florida Supreme Court rejected Hirsh's argument that the judge should have allowed Hill to present to jurors his claim that the killings were justified to prevent abortions.

Hirsh confirmed he has spoken once to Roeder in recent weeks about representing him, but he has not yet been retained. Hirsh said he had not researched the facts of the case or Kansas law enough to know whether the justifiable homicide defense could be used but said a jury should be allowed to decide if it is applicable.

Roeder's trial is scheduled for Sept. 21, though public defender Mark Rudy said he anticipates filing for a continuance.

Rudy declined to comment on Hirsh's possible role in the case. Roeder did not respond to a letter from the AP seeking comment.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled in denying Hill's appeal that his motivation would not change the outcome of the case. "As a practical matter, permitting a defendant to vindicate his or her criminal activity in this manner would be an invitation for lawlessness," the justices wrote.

But Hirsh discounted the suggestion that if a jury acquitted Roeder of murder based on such a defense, it would lead to an open se

ason on abortion doctors.

"It has been open season on unborn children for over 30 years. I think on abortionists there will be a bag limit," Hirsh said in a phone interview this week from his Kennesaw, Ga., office.

He previously represented anti-abortion activist Regina Dinwiddie of Kansas City, Mo., who was among the first protesters targeted in 1995 under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act. Dinwiddie was barred from going within 500 feet of a clinic.

The principle of self-defense and the defense of another has been recognized for centuries, Hirsh said. But he acknowledged its use in abortion-related cases has been stifled, saying that in Hill's case, the prosecutor and judge made sure jurors wouldn't hear it.

"We don't know if it would have prevailed or not and they were scared out of their mind, and you could see it, that it might have," Hirsh said. "And so it's not fair to say it never worked. Well, it hasn't been tried, either."

Richard Levy, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, said such defenses can work, but not necessarily in the context of abortion. The law requires that the threat be imminent, the force reasonable in response and the activity involved unlawful.

Any claim that killing an abortion provider is justifiable likely would fail, he said.

"In particular in the circumstances of the murder of Dr. Tiller there is an imminence problem, there is no imminent threat and, more fundamentally, the activities he was engaged in were legal," Levy said.

The question is

whether a judge would allow jurors to consider that defense.

Wichita attorney E. Jay Greeno, who defended Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon for shooting Tiller in both arms in 1993, said the judge repeatedly shut her down when she tried to testify about abortions the doctor performed.

Procedurally, the judge in Roeder's case would likely hold a pretrial hearing on whether Roeder's attorneys could raise that defense at trial.

"There might be some hope that there would be jury nullification — the jury would vote to acquit — if there were right-to-life advocates within the jury who accepted the argument that an unborn child is a human being and that abortion is murder and therefore the murder of a physician who performs abortion is also justifiable," Levy said.

Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist in Des Moines, Iowa, who in 1996 reprinted the Army of God manual that lists ways to damage abortion clinics, recently wrote a legal brief for Roeder's case on the "necessity defense." He argued that had the alleged shooter not acted, the killing of hundreds of babies every week would have continued. He sent it to Roeder's public defenders, but they have not responded.

Rudy acknowledged that Roeder's attorneys have received several suggested defense strategies, adding that they have given them the "appropriate due response."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

FILE -In this July 28, 2009 file photo, Scott Roeder, left, attends his preliminary hearing in court in Wichita, Kan. Roeder, 51, is charged in the death of Dr. George Tiller. (AP Photo/Jaime Oppenheimer, Pool)

Wash. man indicted for threats to hurt Boulder doctor's family

By Felisa Cardona
The Denver Post

POSTED: 08/26/2009 03:03:55 PM MDT

UPDATED: 08/27/2009 06:11:47 AM MDT

A man who allegedly threatened to kill the family of Boulder abortion provider Dr. Warren Hern has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver.

Donald Hertz, 70, of Spokane, Wash., was indicted on charges of making telephone threats to Hern's office and violations of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).

The indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court this afternoon.

Hertz is the first person prosecuted by the Justice Department under the FACE Act since Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, was killed in Wichita, Kan., said Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar.

The threat to Hern's family came June 23, three weeks after Tiller was shot to death on May 31 while atchurch, Hern said.

"We received an anonymous call saying there were two Vietnam veterans coming from Spanish Fork, Utah, to Boulder to hurt my family," Hern said.

The U.S. Marshals Service — which stepped up protection for abortion providers after Tiller's death — responded to the threat and immediately took steps to get Hern's family out of harm's way.

Hern says he does not know whether the threat was valid.

"My family was terrified," he said. "I was frightened, my staff was frightened. My 92-year-old mother was taken from her apartment in the middle of the night, and it was quite a frightening experience, and we took it seriously because Dr. Tiller had just been assassinated."

The FBI traced the call to Spokane and made contact with the man who made it, Hern said.

"Why is it necessary for a doctor who is helping women to be protected from the anti-abortion movement?" Hern said. "We live in fear of these people."

Hern said he was pleased to hear that Hertz was indicted under the FACE Act because he believes the 1993 legislation has not been enforced enough by the government.

If convicted, Hertz faces up to six years in prison and $350,000 in fines.