Roeder trial: Prosecution wrapping up, Roeder practicing to testify By JUDY L. THOMAS The Kansas City Star

Roeder trial: Prosecution wrapping up, Roeder practicing to testify

By JUDY L. THOMAS

The Kansas City Star

WICHITA | Prosecutors are close to wrapping up their case in Scott Roeder’s murder trial today as the man charged with killing Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller prepares to take the stand in his defense.

“Scott is absolutely planning to testify,” said Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines who visited Roeder in jail last night. “He’s been practicing with his attorneys.”

Leach said Roeder was pleased at how the trial was going and was surprised when prosecutors on Monday brought up the abortion issue during the questioning of a witness after avoiding the subject to that point.

Shortly after noon today, the prosecution concluded four days of presenting evidence and jurors were dismissed for the day.

This afternoon, Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert will take up some legal motions involving what kind of evidence the defense will be allowed to present, and, depending on the judge’s rulings, the prosecution may rest its case. The defense could begin presenting its case on Thursday, with former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline expected to take the stand.

Roeder, 51, of Kansas City, is charged with first-degree murder in the May 31 death of Tiller, one of a handful of doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions.

Roeder has admitted to reporters and in a court filing that he killed Tiller, saying it was necessary to save unborn babies.

Those on both sides of the abortion issue lined up early this morning to get a lottery ticket for the limited public seating in the courtroom. Only 14 seats are being allotted today.

Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and members of his new group, Insurrecta Nex, stood outside the courthouse holding signs that said, “Tiller Killed 60,000 Children,” “Give Roeder a Fair Trial,” “Roeder’s Reason: The Babies,” and “Tiller killed 60,000 children.”

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the National Abortion Federation, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Kansas asking the court to “preclude Roeder from arguing his anti-abortion beliefs in support of a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder.”

“In a civilized society we cannot allow extremists to commit murder to advance their own religious or political beliefs,” said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation. “Scott Roeder should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Allowing the defense to argue that Roeder’s anti-abortion beliefs lessen his accountability Tiller’s murder “sends an ominous signal to all vigilantes,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

“We should all be concerned; having sincere political beliefs does not mean someone should be able to get away with murder,” she said.

Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert has barred Roeder from using a so-called necessity defense, an argument that the killing was necessary to prevent a greater harm – saying such a defense wasn’t recognized by Kansas law. But the judge said he would allow Roeder to present evidence that he sincerely believed his actions were justified to save unborn children — a defense that could lead to a conviction on the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter.

The judge said, however, that until the defense wrapped up its case, he didn’t know whether the evidence would be sufficient enough for him to instruct jurors that they could consider a voluntary manslaughter conviction. Wilbert said he would consider the testimony on a witness-by-witness basis and would not allow the trial to turn into a debate on abortion.

Jurors today heard from a forensics expert who testified that the cartridge case recovered next to Tiller’s body in the church and cartridge cases found where Roeder went target shooting at his brother’s residence were fired from the same .22-caliber gun.

A DNA analyst told jurors that blood found on Roeder’s left black tennis shoe had the same DNA profile as Tiller’s blood.

The prosecution’s 26th and final witness was Jaime Oeberst, chief medical examiner for Sedgwick County, who performed the autopsy on Tiller. As prosecutors displayed several autopsy photos, Oeberst described the injury as a “contact entry wound,” meaning the gun had been placed directly against Tiller’s forehead when fired. She said the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head.

| Judy L. Thomas, jthomas@kcstar.com

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