WICHITA — On the 37th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision, prosecutors who charged a man with killing one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers got through the first day of testimony without mentioning the word abortion in front of jurors.
Instead, they tried to focus on the facts — a doctor gunned down in his church — rather than allow the trial to become a debate over abortion.
But what lawyers simply called the “a-word” when the jury was not present was the most contentious issue in court Friday. Prosecutors have said they do not even want abortion mentioned.
That could change in the coming days when Scott Roeder’s defense team has a chance to try to argue that he believed the killing was justified to save unborn children.
At one point Friday, the judge stopped the defense attorney from using the word abortion when cross-examining a witness who had not first used the word.
In other testimony, witnesses recalled the scene at a Wichita church May 31, when Dr. George Tiller was scheduled to serve as an usher.
Church member Kathy Wegner testified that she saw Tiller enter the fellowship hall and then heard a sound like a balloon popping.
She saw a flash and watched Tiller “just fall flat on his back.” Wegner said the gunman ran out of the church, and another usher ran after him.
Roeder’s defense team did not address the jury in an opening statement but will likely do so later in the trial, which is expected to take two weeks.
District Judge Warren Wilbert has repeatedly said the trial will not turn into a debate over abortion, warning Roeder’s attorneys that he intends to keep the case as a “criminal, first-degree murder trial.”
But the judge galvanized both sides of the abortion battle when he refused to bar the defense from trying to build a case for a conviction on a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.
They want to argue that Roeder, 51, believed Tiller’s killing was necessary to save unborn children.
