A Kansas jury just found Scott Roeder guilty of first degree murder in the killing of abortion doctor George Tiller at his church last May.
The jury reportedly deliberated for less than hour. Roeder, an extremist anti-abortion activist, admitted on the stand that he killed Tiller.
Roeder was also found guilty on two counts of aggravated assault for pointing his gun at church ushers.
The Kansas City Star reports on what’s next:
Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert set Roeder’s sentencing for March 9. Roeder faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with a chance of parole after 25 years.
While Wilbert had allowed Roeder’s attorneys to present a defense on a lesser charge, voluntary manslaughter, he decided Thursday not to give an instruction allowing the jury to consider the charge.
Tiller’s Wichita clinic, which was known for being one of the few that offered late-term abortions, was a target of anti-abortion groups for years. He was shot and wounded in 1993 and his clinic bombed in the mid 1980s.
Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline also pursued Tiller with single-minded intensity for years, never succeeding in finding him guilty of a crime.
Tiller was the eighth person killed in attacks on abortion providers since 1993.
TPMmuckraker’s full coverage of Roeder, his views and background, is here.
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