Posted on Thu, Nov. 12, 2009

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Roeder's 'defense' is nonsense

Scott Roeder dwells in the Sedgwick County Jail these days, awaiting trial early next year on charges that he gunned down George Tiller in a Wichita church in May. But judging from Roeder's unrepentant confessions to the murder this week in the media, Roeder also lives in some other world in which a cold-blooded killing can be justified by the cockamamie excuse of his choosing.

"Defending innocent life — that is what prompted me. It is pretty simple," he told Associated Press.

"Preborn children were in imminent danger," he told the Kansas City Star.

Everybody gets it by now — Roeder strongly opposes abortion and especially objected to Tiller's Wichita practice, with its focus on late-term abortion.

But Tiller's practice was legal under the law, despite the best efforts of a former Kansas attorney general and several grand juries to demonstrate otherwise over many years.

The actions to which Roeder now has confessed in the media violate both law and conscience.

Local pro-life groups also reject Roeder's claim that the murder was justifiable.

And his public defender says that the "necessity defense" isn't even allowed in Kansas. Indeed, it was rejected by Kansas' appellate courts related to abortion in 1993 and 2007.

"There is nothing in the law of Kansas, or anywhere else, that allows this kind of defense," Steve Osburn, head of the Sedgwick County Public Defender's Office and Roeder's lead counsel, told The Eagle.

By trying to argue the so-called necessity defense in the court of public opinion, Roeder invites "jury nullification" — a subversive practice in which jurors acquit a defendant because they view the law under which he's charged as immoral or otherwise wrong.

Roeder's public statements will further burden the judge and others involved in the proceedings with the responsibility to ensure that the jury is impartial, the evidence is relevant, and the case is decided on facts and the law rather than on emotion.

Like any other alleged criminal in the local jail, Roeder is entitled to the full measure of justice under Kansas law. But it will be most regrettable if Roeder continues to pass the time behind bars by trumpeting this nonsense he considers a defense.

— For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

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