Justifiable homicide defense eyed in Roeder's case

By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer Roxana Hegeman, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 29, 3:15 pm ET

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 court-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 season 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."

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Family of suspect in Tiller death had noticed a change in behavior

Tuesday, Sep. 22, 2009

Posted on Tue, Jun. 02, 2009

BY LAURA BAUER AND DAVID KLEPPER
Kansas City Star

Lindsey Roeder thought it was unusual that her ex-husband wanted to hang out with their grown son Friday evening.

Scott P. Roeder, 51, had always been adamant about his Old Testament beliefs and observed the Sabbath from Friday night through Saturday. Nothing could get in the way of that. Not soccer games when his son was younger. Nothing.

But last Friday was different. He wanted to take his 22-year-old son to see Star Trek, then to dinner. It was like Roeder, who family said adopted extremist anti-government and anti-abortion views in the early 1990s, didn't want the evening to end, Lindsey Roeder said Monday.

"In hindsight, my son said, 'He was saying goodbye to me.' "

Scott Roeder is now in a Wichita jail cell and today could be charged with first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault in the Sunday morning shooting death of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

Tiller's attorney, Dan Monnat, said Tiller -- who received regular death threats -- often worried about what would happen to his patients if he was killed. Tiller, who was shot twice in 1993, often wore a bullet-proof vest and was escorted by security.

Monnat said he didn't know what protection Tiller had Sunday morning.

"Whatever the safety precautions, they most regrettably weren't enough," he said.

As part of the inquiry into Tiller's killing, investigators have searched two homes where Roeder has lived, one in Merriam and one in Kansas City.

Wichita police continued to investigate Monday but provided no new details.

What did emerge is a clearer picture of Roeder, who family said could be a kind man but had a history of mental health problems.

Lindsey Roeder noticed a change in Scott between 1991 and 1994, when the couple separated. In that time, she said, he'd started having trouble paying the bills and functioning with daily life.

"One day someone told him that paying income taxes isn't constitutional," Lindsey Roeder recalled. "And he realized if he stopped paying his taxes he could pay all of his bills. From there things just started like a snowball. He became very obsessive."

Roeder moved out of the home in 1994, she said, after he got involved with the Freemen movement, an anti-government group.

His views against abortion got stronger over the years.

"He thought the doctors were murderers," Lindsey said.

She said she and her son have always disagreed with his beliefs. But "he was not a mean, violent person," she said. "That's why I don't understand how you can be against killing a baby, an unborn child, and turn around and believe it's justifiable homicide."

The couple divorced in 1996, after Roeder was arrested in Topeka when Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate.

After the divorce, Roeder saw his son during supervised visits. For the past four years the father and son have seen each other periodically.

"Usually when he's with him, (Scott Roeder) talks about his beliefs, my son tunes it out," Lindsey said. "He doesn't believe in any of that, he believes it's over the edge."

Roeder's beliefs also came up in another custody battle in Pennsylvania. In 2003, Roeder sued for visitation of a girl born the previous year that he said he fathered.

The child's mother and her current husband told the court they felt Roeder would not be a good influence on the girl.

A court ruling filed in 2005 said Roeder was earlier diagnosed with schizophrenia "for which he takes no medication, which may pose a clear and present danger to the female minor child."

The child's mother also brought up Roeder's affiliations:"... Past conduct and association with anti-government organizations is ongoing and poses a risk to her daughter," the records said.

The child's mother and her husband -- who has raised the girl as his own since her birth --"feared that (Roeder) would kidnap and hide their daughter since he threatened to do so with his son."

Lindsey Roeder said she has spoken with the woman in Pennsylvania, but her son and his half-sister have not met.

Her focus is now on her son, helping him get through everything that's happened since Sunday morning.

"It's been an absolutely devastating 24 hours," Lindsey Roeder said late Monday afternoon. "I haven't slept. My son can't sleep.... I can't imagine, if it's been like this for us, what it's been like for the Tiller family."

Contributing: Dan Margolies of The Star

© 2009 Wichita Eagle and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansas.com

Man charged with murder in Kansas doctor's death

Scott Roeder was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

District Attorney Nola Fouston runs down the charges against the man accused of killing a late-term abortion provider.

Story Highlights NEW: Physician says future of slain doctor's clinic is unknown Scott Roeder, 51, charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault He is accused of killing Wichita doctor George Tiller on Sunday Preliminary hearing is set for June 16 WICHITA, Kansas (CNN) -- Kansas prosecutors have brought murder and assault charges against the man suspected of killing Wichita physician George Tiller, whose women's clinic was a frequent target of protests against abortion. Scott Roeder, 51, is being held without bail on a first-degree murder charge and two counts of aggravated assault stemming from Tiller's shooting death Sunday morning, Sedgwick County District Judge Ben Burgess said. Burgess set a preliminary hearing in the case for June 16. Police have not disclosed a possible motive in Tiller's killing, but associates said Roeder was a regular among the anti-abortion protesters who routinely gathered at his Wichita clinic, Women's Health Care Services. Tiller, 67, was one of the few U.S. doctors who performed late-term abortions, and he had survived one attempt on his life before being gunned down in his church Sunday morning. Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty "under the facts and circumstances that are known at this time," District Attorney Nola Foulston said. Watch the district attorney explain the charges » Kansas state law allows the death penalty only in certain circumstances, such as multiple killings, contract killings, the deaths of police officers or jailers, or a slaying that takes place during a sexual assault. Roeder was in the county jail during his brief initial court appearance and appeared in court via video. He requested a court-appointed lawyer during the hearing, during which he was dressed in maroon jail coveralls and appeared to fidget. Watch scenes from court Tuesday » Burgess ordered Roeder to have no contact with witnesses or Tiller's family. Since Tiller's death, supporters have left a few bouquets of flowers outside his clinic. The architecture of the low-slung, windowless concrete building -- which is fenced off, monitored by cameras and separated from buildings behind it by a moat-like ditch -- reflected the threats he faced for nearly two decades. In a statement issued Tuesday, Tiller's family said they hope his "valuable work" will go on, "but there have been no final decisions made about the long-term plans for the medical practice." "There is currently no plan to immediately reopen the clinic and no patients are being scheduled at this time. The Tiller family's focus, of course, is to determine what is in the best interests of the employees and the patients," the statement read. Dr. Leroy Carhart, a Nebraska physician who also practices at Tiller's clinic, said at his suburban Omaha office that he left a Monday meeting in Wichita with the belief that the practice would reopen "in the very near future." But he said, "At the present time, there's no known future." Carhart was the plaintiff who challenged a federal ban on a type of late-term procedure that opponents labeled "partial-birth" abortion. The Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2006. Tiller practiced medicine for nearly 40 years. Most of his patients were grappling with pregnancies that were "fatally or catastrophically complicated by medical problems," Dr. Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and a friend, said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "The many women who come for late abortions, in fact, have desperate circumstances with a desired pregnancy," he said. "They want to have a baby, not an abortion." But Tiller's practice made Wichita a flashpoint in the controversy over abortion, which opponents routinely decry as the killing of unborn children. Most anti-abortion leaders quickly condemned Tiller's killing and disavowed Roeder. The National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion organization in the United States, said it "unequivocally condemns" violence. And Wichita-based Operation Rescue said Roeder never was "a member, contributor, or volunteer." "Operation Rescue has diligently and successfully worked for years through peaceful, legal means, and through the proper channels to see to it that abortionists around the nation are brought to justice. Without due process, there can be no justice," it said. But Hern called those disavowals "hypocritical nonsense." "This is the result of 35 years of anti-abortion harassment and terrorism and hate speech and rhetoric and harsh names and exploitation of the abortion issue as a political issue to get power," said Hern, who runs an abortion clinic in Boulder, outside Denver. "And this is the inevitable result of this kind of hateful behavior by the anti-abortion movement." Carhart blasted abortion opponents who resort to violence "and those who support and incite these violent acts." He declined to name names but urged the estimated 46 million women who have received abortions and their supporters to demand that government officials "enforce the laws on the books that protect us from hate crimes." "And if these officials don't openly respect your right to choose abortion, you have the power to vote them out of office," he said. CNN's Ed Lavandera, Gary Tuchman and Aaron Cooper contributed to this report. All AboutGeorge Tiller • Abortion

Links referenced within this article Watch the district attorney explain the charges » #cnnSTCVideo Watch scenes from court Tuesday » #cnnSTCVideo Tiller http://topics.cnn.com/topics/George_Tiller abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion George Tiller http://topics.cnn.com/topics/George_Tiller Abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion

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A Portrait of an Alleged Murderer: The Life of Suspected Tiller Killer Scott Roeder

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060203.html

Tuesday June 2, 2009 By Peter J. Smith WICHITA, Kansas, June 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A clearer portrait has now emerged of the man who allegedly took it into his hands to play judge, jury, and executioner of George Tiller, the foremost provider of late-term abortions in the United States. The portrait reveals a mentally disturbed, long-time anarchist and convicted felon, who appears to have succumbed to the influence of an anti-abortion domestic terrorist group and believed that he had to commit murder in order to stave off the wrath of God. Just three hours after Tiller was gunned down in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, where he had been ushering, law enforcement apprehended Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, Kansas, traveling the speed limit on the I-35 back to his home. He was officially charged with the murder today. Tiller's murderer had shot the abortionist once and threatened two other men in the church, before departing the scene of the crime in a powder-blue 1993 Ford Taurus, which deputies checked out as belonging to Roeder. After Sherriff’s deputies intercepted Roeder, he surrendered to them without incident and was taken back to Wichita for questioning. However in the aftermath of the murder and subsequent arrest, information has surfaced that shows Roeder to be a mentally unstable individual, who as early as the 1990s adopted quasi-biblical beliefs to compensate for his moral failings, and fell under the influence of two violent radical organizations, especially a fringe anti-abortion group far outside the sphere of the pro-life community. This group is the so-called Army of God, a group that advocates domestic terror, violence, and murder against abortion facilities and those who work there. The Anarchist Origins of Scott P. Roeder Roeder’s first links with violence and terrorism began with his association with the anti-government “Freemen” movement. The Freemen claim that the individual has sovereignty above the government, making them largely exempt from laws, regulations and taxes. Among other things, they began operating their own legal system, and printing their own paper currency independent of state and federal governments. Roeder’s ex-wife, Lindsay, told the Kansas City Star that Roeder began to break down in the early 90s, when he began having trouble paying bills and acting normal in daily life. "One day someone told him that paying income taxes isn't constitutional," Lindsey Roeder told the Star. "And he realized if he stopped paying his taxes he could pay all of his bills. From there things just started like a snowball. He became very obsessive." In April 1996, while the Freemen were engaged in the first month of an armed 81-day stand-off with the FBI at their Jordan, Montana compound, Roeder was pulled over and arrested by Shawnee county deputies for driving without a valid license plate. Instead Roeder had a tag reading, "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American.'' Roeder had been on an FBI list of Freemen, and when a deputy searched the trunk of his car, he found weapons, ammunition, a gas mask , and bomb-making materials: a fuse cord, a pound of black powder, two nine-volt batteries, and a switch for a bomb-trigger. Roeder was then charged and subsequently convicted of felonious possession and use of explosives, driving with a suspended license, and having neither vehicle registration nor car insurance. Following his conviction, Roeder was released on probation with intensive monitoring, and he was required to have no more contact with anarchist anti-government groups that advocated violence. Yet, Roeder soon violated parole in 1997 by refusing to pay his taxes and give his employer a social security number, which earned him a 16 month sentence in state prison. However, in December of that year, the Kansas Court of Appeals, threw out his conviction on the technical grounds that the officer arresting Roeder had improperly searched his car. Schizophrenia, Moral Confusion, and an Obsession with Abortion Throughout this time, Roeder had been suffering with a schizophrenic mental disorder, and his obsession with abortion had brought him into contact with extreme anti-abortion activists, who adopt an “ends justify the means” ethic toward abortion, rejecting the moral values of the pro-life community. Roeder had fallen in step with the ideology of the Army of God movement, which claims the murder of abortion providers constitutes “justifiable homicide” and praises the murderers of abortionists as “American heroes” on its website. "I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," Regina Dinwiddie, an acquaintance of Roeder’s, told the Kansas City Star. Dinwiddie herself had signed the first and second “defensive action statements” advocating the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide,” and her home was featured in an HBO documentary on the AOG called “Soldiers in the Army of God.” Dinwiddie told the Star that in 1996, Roeder walked into the Kansas City Planned Parenthood abortion facility, demanded to see abortionist Dr. Robert Crist, stared at him for 45 seconds, then said, “I’ve seen you now” before turning to walk away. Roeder also enmeshed himself with the AOG affiliated Prayer and Action News, a newsletter edited by David Leach, which also advocated the murder of abortionists as “justifiable homicide.” Leach had reprinted the 3rd edition of the Army of God manual in 1996, which included bomb-making instructions, and advocated acid attacks and murder among its “99 Covert Ways to Stop Abortion,” a direct violation of a ban by the Justice Department, which was confiscating all copies of the book. Roeder met with Leach in Topeka. Leach had been visiting Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, who attempted to assassinate Tiller at his abortion facility in 1993. "I met him once, and he wrote to me a few times," Leach told the Kansas City Star. "I remember that he was sympathetic to our cause, but I don't remember any details." However, among the details that the Star reported Leach did remember, was Roeder’s obsession with government conspiracies. He said that Roeder would demonstrate how to remove the magnetic strip from a five dollar bill. "He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money," Leach added. Over the years, Roeder’s mental instability and obsession with anarchist groups and abortion ground down those people closest to him. Roeder’s first marriage of ten years ended in divorce after his 1996 arrest and conviction, leading him to estrangement from his now 22-year old son, Nick. Roeder’s ex-wife Lindsay told ABC News that Roeder had little contact with her son, seeing him once every six weeks, and that her son had no interest in seeing him. In later years, Roeder fathered a child by another woman, who fought to retain sole custody of her child with her current husband. The woman expressed grave concern for the safety and welfare of her daughter to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, citing both Roeder’s “past conduct and association with anti-government organizations [which] is ongoing” and “chronic mental disability of schizophrenia for which he takes no medication.” The court denied her request despite the plea that her little girl was living in an intact household with the only father and mother she ever knew. The Lead-Up and Aftermath of the Murder Preliminary reports from law enforcement indicate that Tiller's murderer acted alone. The investigation, however, continues to examine Roeder's background and activities. In the last several years leading up to Tiller’s assassination, the mentally disturbed Roeder expressed more violent agitation and a belief that divine wrath would befall the United States unless Tiller were stopped. “Bleass [sic] everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp,” says a May 19 post attributed to him on Operation Rescue’s website. “Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.” Elsewhere, on a separate website, Roeder had posted in September 2007, “It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the ‘lawlessness’ which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp ‘Mengele’ of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement [sic] upon our nation.” Operation Rescue, the Wichita-based leader of prayerful protests outside Tiller’s facility, has been quick to point out that Roeder is “not affiliated with this organization” and that thousands of persons, including Roeder and pro-abortion activists, have posted on its open website. “Scott Roeder has never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue,” OR president Troy Newman said in a statement. “We deplore the criminal actions with which Mr. Roeder is accused,” said Newman. “The pro-life ethic is to value all human life from the moment of conception until natural death.” Operation Rescue had expelled Rev. Donald Spitz, the founder of the AOG website, in 1993, after Spitz had praised the murderer of Pensacola, Florida abortionist Dr. David Gunn. In a days leading up to his alleged murder of Tiller, Roeder made one last visit on Friday to his estranged son. His ex-wife told the Kansas City Star that the event was unusual since Roeder had embraced an Old Testament Sabbath observance from Friday to Saturday. Tiller was killed just over two months after a Kansas jury had voted to acquit the abortionist of 19 misdemeanor charges relating to violations of Kansas’s ban on late-term abortions. The jury had acquitted Tiller largely on the technicality that Ann Kristin Neuhaus, the abortionist signing off on his late-term abortions, was not a full-time employee of his, despite their close financial affiliation. The political consequences of George Tiller's murder are only now beginning to unfold. However, if past is prologue, this latest Army of God murder, the first murder of an abortionist in eleven years, will be seized upon by abortion advocates to hamper the momentum of the pro-life movement. Immediately after the murder, abortion supporters began to paint the whole pro-life movement with the brush of “terrorist” and “extremist.” URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060203.html Copyright © LifeSiteNews.com. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License. You may republish this article or portions of it without request provided the content is not altered and it is clearly attributed to "LifeSiteNews.com". Any website publishing of complete or large portions of original LifeSiteNews articles MUST additionally include a live link to www.LifeSiteNews.com. The link is not required for excerpts. Republishing of articles on LifeSiteNews.com from other sources as noted is subject to the conditions of those sources.

Clinic worker chased off suspect before doctor's slaying

Story Highlights NEW: Suspect tried to vandalize another clinic day before shooting, worker says Scott Roeder, 51, of the Kansas City, Kansas, area held without bond Dr. George Tiller shot and killed while ushering at his Wichita church Sunday Tiller was one few remaining doctors in the U.S. offering late-term abortions WICHITA, Kansas (CNN) -- The day before a Kansas abortion provider was gunned down at his church, the suspect in his slaying was chased off from another clinic he tried to vandalize, a worker there said Monday. Scott Roeder faces a scheduled court hearing Tuesday in the weekend slaying of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few U.S. doctors who still performed late-term abortions. Associates described Roeder as a regular participant in anti-abortion demonstrations in Kansas City and Wichita, where Tiller's practice was located, but most abortion opponents disavowed him Monday. Roeder was "a regular" in demonstrations outside Central Family Medicine in Kansas City, Kansas, a clinic worker told CNN. The worker, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity out of fears for his safety, said Roeder's height -- over 6 feet -- made him "hard to miss." Early Saturday morning, a worker at the clinic "actually chased after him" after spotting him trying to pour epoxy into the facility's locks two weekends in a row. Video surveillance cameras at the clinic captured Roeder on May 23, but not well enough "for any kind of conviction of any sort," the worker said. "He hit us in 2000, the same thing -- two weekends in a row," the worker said. But Saturday, "He only got one lock glued before we nailed him." Another clinic worker "managed to catch his license plate number," the worker said. "I reported this to federal authorities on Saturday." He said FBI agents told him nothing could be done with the information until a federal grand jury convened. The man said he memorized the license number -- and after learning of Tiller's killing on Sunday, he found out "that the license plate number of the getaway was the same as the license plate that we had here." Roeder, 51, was arrested about 30 miles southwest of Kansas City on Sunday, about three hours after Tiller's death. He faces possible first-degree murder charges in the killing and was being held without bond in the Sedgwick County jail, according to the sheriff's department. Watch panel discuss ramifications of slaying » Abortion is one of the most contentious issues in U.S. politics, and opposition to the practice has periodically spilled over into bloodshed. Tiller and his Wichita clinic were the target of frequent protests and legal challenges, and he had survived a 1993 shooting before being gunned down while serving as an usher Sunday. Roeder had a history of protesting at clinics where abortion is performed, one fellow protester who knew him told CNN, and he appears to have posted a message on the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue's Web site in 2007, calling for prayers to shut down Tiller's "death camp." "Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller," the message reads. Roeder also had been affiliated with the Freeman movement, an anti-government movement in the 1990s. In 1996, he was arrested in Kansas with explosives in his car; in court, a Shawnee County prosecutor called Roeder a "substantial threat to public safety" and said he refused to acknowledge the authority of the courts. Roeder served 16 months in prison and eight on probation before his conviction was overturned on appeal. Eugene Frye, who says he has known Roeder for years as an anti-tax campaigner, said just Roeder showed up at a recent abortion protest talking about this year's trial of Tiller, whom Frye called the "killer." Tiller was acquitted in March of 19 misdemeanor counts of performing unlawful procedures at his clinic, and Frye said Roeder had attended the trial. See what people are saying about Tiller's slaying » "He just said he'd been down there, and that the trial was a sham," Frye said. But he said he was surprised that Roeder was a suspect in Tiller's death, saying he never spoke of any kind of violence. Tiller describes the philosophy of his clinic in 1999 » But Regina Dinwiddie, a 54-year-old grandmother, said Roeder once confronted a doctor at a Planned Parenthood center, telling the physician, "Now I know what you look like." "Scott came out and told us that he had done that, and we all said, 'Scott, you better leave or they are gonna get after you,'" Dinwiddie said. "Next thing, all these people come rushing out of the place, all worried. Scott was standing up for what he believed in." Dinwiddie said Tiller's slaying was "absolutely" justified. "He forfeited his life by taking the lives of innocent children," she said. And in Iowa, Dan Holman, of the anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn, told CNN that Tiller's death was something to "cheer." "I was cheered by it, because I knew he wouldn't be killing any more babies," Holman said. Holman protested a May 17 speech by President Obama in which the president urged Americans to find common ground on abortion. He told CNN that "all abortionists are deserving of death, and they are not the only ones. There are politicians and judges, and others who support this murder are also deserving of death." Asked to name names, he said, "George Bush, Barack Obama -- any politician that gives our tax money to Planned Parenthood and organizations that kill babies or participate in the killing of children deserve the same penalty." But the killing drew condemnation from national anti-abortion organizations. The Rev. Gary Cass, director of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, said, "This guy is not one of us, and if he thinks he is, then he is deluded." "I and so many others have been fighting in the movement within the parameters of the law, and all this does is paint us in a broad, awful stroke," Cass said. Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry told reporters in Washington that Tiller's killing was "wrong, period," and that anti-abortion leaders "are not responsible for George Tiller's death." But he added, "George Tiller was a mass murderer and horrifically, he reaped what he sowed." "We in the pro-life movement must not shrink from our duty to continue to use words that are highly charged, to do protests, to expose these abortionists, and to work for the complete eradication of child killing," he said. Clarence Roeder, the suspect's uncle, told CNN affiliate KMBC that Tiller's death was "a tragedy for the Tiller family." And Scott Roeder's ex-wife, Lindsey, told CNN that the killing was "a selfish thing to do." If he was behind the killing, she said, Roeder "didn't think of his son. He didn't think of the consequences this would have for anybody, his family or anyone in that church or in Dr. Tiller's family." During the 1990s, three doctors who performed abortions were slain in high-profile cases. See all abortion-related attacks since 1993 » In 1998, a sniper killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his Amherst, New York, home. Anti-abortion activist James Kopp was later arrested in France and is serving life in prison. In 1994, Dr. John Bayard Britton and a volunteer escort were shot and killed outside an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Paul Hill, a former minister, was convicted in the killings and executed in 2003. In 1993, another doctor, David Gunn, was shot and killed outside another Pensacola clinic. His killer, Michael Griffin, is serving a life sentence. In addition, a nurse at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic was maimed and an off-duty police officer was killed in a 1998 bombing by Eric Rudolph, who included abortion among his list of anti-government grievances. Rudolph admitted to that attack and three other bombings -- including the 1996 attack on the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia -- and is serving life in prison. CNN's Drew Griffin, Randi Kaye, Kathleen Johnston, Paul Vercammen, Ashley Fantz and Matt Smith contributed to this report. All AboutAbortion • Kansas • Wichita

Links referenced within this article Watch panel discuss ramifications of slaying » #cnnSTCVideo See what people are saying about Tiller's slaying » #cnnSTCOther1 Tiller describes the philosophy of his clinic in 1999 » #cnnSTCVideo abortions http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion See all abortion-related attacks since 1993 » #cnnSTCOther2 Abortion http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Abortion Kansas http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Kansas Wichita http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Wichita

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