A judge ruled Tuesday that Kansas law doesn't allow a so-called ''necessity defense'' in the trial of a man charged with killing one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.
The decision was another blow to lawyers for 51-year-old Scott Roeder, who has confessed to shooting Dr. George Tiller on May 31 and says it was necessary to save unborn children.
In his ruling, Judge Warren Wilbert cited a 1993 criminal trespassing case involving an abortion clinic in which the Kansas Supreme Court said that to allow the personal beliefs of a person to justify criminal activity to stop a law-abiding citizen from exercising his rights would ''not only lead to chaos but would be tantamount to sanctioning anarchy.''But he noted that that case dealt only with a property rights issue, whereas the case involving Roeder has elevated the argument to whether it is justified to take one life for another. ...NYT
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More than 300 pages of files that the Federal Bureau of Investigation kept on Michael Jackson were released by the bureau on Tuesday, detailing its investigations into charges of child molestation that were brought against the singer, as well as extortion threats that were made against Mr. Jackson in 1992.
The files, which were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by several news media organizations, describe Mr. Jackson as “a celebrity pop star” and document how the bureau aided California law enforcement agencies when the singer was investigated for a child molestation case in 1993 [pdf] that never went to trial, and in a second such case from 2004 [pdf] in which Mr. Jackson was tried and acquitted. The files also describe another child molestation investigation conducted by the bureau in late 2004 [pdf] and closed when a witness, the file said, “advised the agents that he had no interest in testifying against” Mr. Jackson and “would legally fight any attempt to do so.” ...NYT [links at the source]
