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blue bits. red rocks.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
When is a murder not a murder?

When is a murder not a murder?

I guess when the victim is a doctor who performs abortions and the murderer is a fanatic who thinks he’s justified in shooting an unarmed man point blank in the forehead.

The judge in the case of Scott Roeder, who has admitted to planning the killing and then shooting Dr. George Tiller in the head at Tiller’s church last May while Tiller was serving as an usher, ruled Friday that Roeder could argue that he should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, not because of any facts in the case suggesting it was anything other than a premeditated homicide, but because Roeder thought that his action would ‘save unborn children.

So does that mean if you are motivated by a political belief the illegal, even up to and including murder, is now the legal and acceptable? What’s next? If the holocaust museum shooter had survived (he died the other day) he should be able to plead guilty to a lesser charge than murder because in his mind killing a black man working for a Jewish client would be justified? Maybe they should water down the charges against the Christmas Day bomber too because he thought what he was doing was right in the name of Allah?

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