U.S. Supreme Court brief. Filing deadline set by the courts: the 42nd Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 2015.
"Questions presented" to the Supreme Court:
1. Has the fact that all unborn babies are humans/persons been sufficiently established by [the unanimous consensus of all four categories of court-recognized finders of facts*] - juries, expert witnesses, state legislatures, and Congress to invoke Roe's ruling that state legislatures and courts should now protect their 14th Amendment rights? [*this bracketed qualification was not in the formal "questions presented" but was central to the argument.]
2. Is the 6th Amendment right to trial by jury satisfied when the only contested issue of the trial is kept secret from the jury and decided by the judge alone?
3. Can any interpretation of any element of any defense, which leaves no way to lawfully save thousands of lives using the least necessary force, stand, once fact finders are allowed to remove all reasonable doubt that the many lives saved were of humans, a.k.a. persons?
U.S. Supreme Court's notice that it will not hear Roeder's case.
Documents, Briefs, etc. below the U.S. Supreme Court
|
BACKGROUND Scott Roeder killed abortionist George Tiller, and was convicted of
murder by the trial court in January, 2010. He is appealing the decision of the trial judge to exclude evidence and
pleadings that he killed Tiller in order to prevent imminent illegal physical
harm. This webpage is a collection of links to statutes, rules, decisions, and
articles relevant to the case. For more information contact Dave Leach. Business phone 515 244 3711.
I, Dave Leach, assembled all the pro se briefs, and wrote much of the content. I had expert, highly credentialed anonymous help. I had different help preparing the trial brief than I did preparing the appellate briefs. On "imminence", the concept of "the window of opportunity to prevent harm" being that which must be "imminent" was mine, but the legal research to back it up was theirs. On Necessity, that was mostly mine. On 18 USC 1841(d), that was from the help I had with the trial brief. But none of it was "you write about this and I'll write about that." It grew out of conversation. There were many phone calls with Scott to go over the legal concepts and get his approval, there were conversations with lawyers about taking over our work but they wanted over twice the $25,000 our potential contributors could afford (one offered to do it for less but to only present an "insanity" defense), and appreciated contributions tht covered the much lower costs of just phone calls and printing. |
ISSUES ARGUED: the "collapse" of abortion's fragile legality The most significant attack on the legality of abortion itself is that federal law 18 U.S.C. 1841(d), by legally recognizing ALL unborn babies as "members of the species homo sapiens", said precisely what Roe v. Wade said must be said for the legality of abortion to "collapse". This law was enacted on April Fool's Day, 2004, but is no joke. Numerous courts have declared it, and its version in several states, as constitutional. This argument is developed in Scott's pro se briefs #3 and #8 under "Appellate briefs", and #10 under "Trial Documents". This argument is applied to the defense of any stae law that outlaws abortion, in the article "No Greener Light". (Future proposed "personhood" laws and amendments are "no greener light" than the bright green light already in federal law for states to criminalize abortion as if Roe never existed. So why are prolife groups still raising money for more "personhood" laws, before they will be ready to bring a case before the Supreme Court that directly addresses Roe's "collapse"?) More details at www.Saltshaker.US/SLIC |
| ISSUE ARGUED: the legal authority to save lives regardless of the legal status of a killer The "Necessity Defense" is a law found in every state under a variety of names. The U.S. Supreme Court recognizes its authority even in states which do not spell it out in their laws. It sets aside the applicability of any law in any situation where its enforcement would cause serious harm, injury, or death. For example, it is not a crime to speed to the hospital, to save your son who is profusely bleeding from a head wound. A number of state supreme courts, including Kansas in Tilson v. City of Wichita, have said Necessity can't justify saving humans from being killed by abortion because (1) who knows if they are human so that there is any greater "harm" in killing them than in breaking the law in the way of saving them? (2) "Necessity" only works when the harm to be prevented is "imminent". (3) The killer has special legal protection -- the Constitution itself protects his right to kill human beings! Roeder's pro se briefs argue that Roe itself specifically refrained from granting any such license! The briefs also point out that whether the unborn are human beings, juries are supposed to be the "judges of the facts" so it was "reversible error" to withhold from the jury the knowledge of the very existence of this issue, and this fact issue was the only contested fact issue of the trial so withholding from the jury the only contested issue is to withhold from a U.S. citizen his right to a trial (of the contested issues) by a jury. | ISSUE ARGUED: Tiller's abortions, scheduled the next day, were "imminent" according to Federal and Kansas case law. No law, case law, or dictionary definition limits the word "imminent" to meaning "seconds away" or even "minutes away", as Judge Wilbert did in Scott Roeder's trial. Federal case law gives examples of "imminence" that was days away in one case, possibly months away in another, and who knows when in another. The essential meaning is the certainty that the harm will happen if steps are not taken to prevent it. The only reason imminence is even a reasonable limit is as a way of measuring indirectly whether the defendant could have stopped it with a less violent alternative. The closer it is in time, the less possible an alternative would have been. |
