On May 31, 2009, George Tiller, a physician from Wichita, Kansas, was shot to death at point-blank range during a Sunday morning service at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he was serving as an usher. Tiller was one of the few doctors in the United States who performed late terminations of pregnancy. He had previously survived a 1993 murder attempt in which Shelley Shannon shot him in both arms. Tiller was wearing body armor at the time of his death, a precaution he had taken since 1998 after the FBI told him he was being targeted by anti-abortion militants. After the shooting, the gunman threatened two other individuals who tried to stop his departure and fled in a car later described by witnesses as a powder-blue 1993 Ford Taurus.
The shooter, Scott Philip Roeder, of Merriam, Kansas, was arrested approximately three hours later in Gardner, Kansas, roughly 170 miles away. He was formally charged on June 2, 2009, with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Prosecutors determined the killing did not meet Kansas's standard for capital murder. Roeder had a documented history of anti-government activism, including membership in the Montana Freemen movement, a 1996 arrest involving explosive materials found in his car (a conviction later overturned on appeal due to an illegal search), and years of anti-abortion militancy, including contact with figures associated with the Army of God and Operation Rescue. In the day before the shooting, a Kansas City clinic worker reported to the FBI that a man matching Roeder's description had glued clinic locks shut.
In November 2009, Roeder publicly confessed to the killing in comments to the Associated Press, stating he acted because he believed "preborn children's lives were in imminent danger." At trial, Roeder took the stand in his own defense on January 28, 2010, admitting to the killing and describing his anti-abortion views. The presiding judge subsequently ruled that the jury would not be given the option of a voluntary manslaughter verdict. On January 29, 2010, after less than 40 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Roeder guilty on all three charges: first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
On April 1, 2010, Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert sentenced Roeder to a "Hard 50" — life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 50 years — plus two additional years for the aggravated assault counts. Roeder's attorneys appealed, and the Kansas Supreme Court upheld the conviction on October 24, 2014, while also calling for re-sentencing in light of intervening U.S. Supreme Court rulings on mandatory minimum sentencing procedures. On November 23, 2016, Roeder was re-sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 25 years rather than 50, a decision prosecutors said accounted for Roeder's age and health, and one to which Tiller's family reportedly did not object.
The killing prompted widespread condemnation from a broad range of political and religious figures, including President Barack Obama, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Family Research Council, and the National Right to Life Committee, alongside statements from some anti-abortion figures and groups describing Roeder's actions in more sympathetic terms. Wichita had no abortion provider until 2013, when Trust Women Foundation opened a clinic in the city.
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