Posted on 09/03/2003 7:18:05 AM PDT by JonathansMommie
STARKE, Fla. (Sept. 3) - Paul Hill, a former minister who gunned down an abortion doctor, said he feels no remorse and suggested the state will be making him a martyr when he becomes the first person executed in the United States for anti-abortion violence.
Barring an unlikely last-minute stay, the 49-year-old former Presbyterian minister will be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 1994 murders in Pensacola of Dr. John Britton and his escort, retired Air Force Lt. Col. James Herman Barrett.
Barrett's wife, June, was wounded in the shootings outside the Ladies Center in Pensacola.
Hill has not appealed.
``The sooner I am executed ... the sooner I am going to heaven,'' Hill said in a jailhouse interview. ``I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse.''
``More people should act as I have acted,'' Hill added.
Abortion-rights groups worry that Hill's execution will trigger reprisals by those who share his steadfast belief that violence to stop abortion is justified. Several Florida officials connected to the case received threatening letters last week, accompanied by rifle bullets.
Gov. Jeb Bush, who was named in one of the threatening letters, said Tuesday the threats would not keep him from carrying out the law.
``I'm not going to change the deeply held views that I have on (the death penalty) because others have deeply held views that disagree,'' he said. ``I totally respect them. And they should respect what the rule of law is here in our state.''
Britton's stepdaughter has also spoken out against the death penalty, calling it ``barbaric and inhuman,'' and said Wednesday that while she doesn't support Hill, she opposes his execution.
``I've had these feelings for a long time, before he (Britton) was murdered, I've always been a proponent of nonviolence,'' Catherine Britton Fairbanks said Wednesday on NBC's ``Today'' show. ``But then when he was murdered that brought it to the forefront.
``I spent a lot of time researching the elements of Paul Hill and his group, but since then I've worked against the death penalty, opposing it whenever I get a chance to speak out against it.''
Britton Fairbanks is estranged from the rest of the Britton family, most of whom support Hill's execution.
``He is not a martyr, but a criminal,'' said Britton's daughter, Patsy Britton Coleman, 43. ``Killing innocent people to scare other people into behaving the way he believes is morally correct is something our society needs to fight against.''
Coleman, of Roseville, N.C., told The News & Observer of Raleigh her father, a family practitioner, felt strongly about giving women the option of choosing an abortion.
Some death penalty opponents have pointed to the prospect of violence as a reason to stop this execution in particular.
``We're very concerned that Paul Hill's call for violence may be picked up by any person to whom God speaks,'' said Abe Bonowitz, the head of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. ``That could be prevented. It should be.''
Hill, a father of three, has supporters who have maintained a Web site in his honor, with snapshots and ballads, but most major anti-abortion groups have repudiated him.
Some of his backers liken him to John Brown, the abolitionist hanged for his crimes. One militant anti-abortion group, Missionaries to the Unborn, likens Hill to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who was executed after joining the plot to assassinate Hitler.
``Paul Hill is being martyred tomorrow, and that's wrong,'' said Bonowitz.
72 virgins, eh?
John Brown and Paul Hill both opposed great moral evils: enslaving people and murdering children, and they both used questionable means in seeking to alleviate those evils.
It's interesting to contrast Hill's attitude with Karla Fay Tucker's. Both professed Christianity. Tucker's sentence of death was absolutely just. Hill's was more problematic.
Yet Hill, who believes in his heart that he has done no wrong, is willing to go to his death without complaint while Tucker whined and cried and did every undignified bit of squirming possible to worm her way out of her sentence.
The reaction of the death penalty groups is instructive: their silence on Hill has been deafening while they inundated the media with pleas for Tucker.
Regardless how one sides with Hill here, doesn't that phrase above strike anyone as kind of darkly ironic?
I would lump them all into the same category. They perpetrate evil under the guise of religious authority.
God's ends are only achieved through God's means.
Satan to killer: We've got a special ring of Hell reserved just for you. BWAHAHAHA
The way he is so pleased with himself and all giddy about it is sick, very sick.
The interesting thing in the Hill case is who his victims were.
He killed people who were in the business of murdering infants for cash.
Moreover, he killed them as they were preparing to murder more children.
It's interesting that the only reason why Hill is on trial and his victims weren't is that his victims had already passed through the birth canal.
That's problematic - and so is the very notion of the legalized murder of unborn children.
Will the abortionist will be there with him ?
Is your moral residence Sodom or Gomorrah ?
The 9/11 hijackers intentionally and randomly murdered thousands of innocent people.
Hill intentionally and specifically killed two people who were themselves guilty of murder and who were planning to murder still more people.
Your love of abortion blinds you to the hard facts of the case.
NOPE!
Why else would one cheer homosexual rape ?
I hate abortion as much as you do pal, but your defense of this murderer makes you sound like the jihadis. Even Flip Benhem says this guy is a heretic.
Not cheering it, just observing the contrast between the "reward" he is expecting and the one that awaits him, just like the other jihadis who were expecting 72 virgins in paradise.
Most likely, yes.
He was caught, convicted, and setenced to death.
To this day the setence has not been carried out although there is no doubt that he did the killings (he gave details to the police).
Since the Florida case took place in 94, just 9 years ago, how do you compare the two cases without comming to the conclusion that the legal system in Florida places more value on an abortionists and his helper's life than the State of Indiana places on a young married family of four?
Which explains your penchant for inaccuracy.
They perpetrate evil under the guise of religious authority.
You have a confused notion of what "evil" is.
In the Christian religion deadly force is permissible in order to prevent the murder of innocents.
If, in your moral universe, this is "evil" then please explain why.
God's ends are only achieved through God's means.
And what are God's means? Are they what you say they are, are they what Paul Hill says they are, are they what the Book of Joshua says they are? What is the standard?
Well you seemed certain minutes ago that he would be but are hedging your bets with the abortionists. That tells me you are not quite sure what you believe or why. That is fair enough.
they both used questionable means in seeking to alleviate those evils.There is nothing "questionable" about it. He committed multiple premeditated murders. His embrace of "martyrdom" makes him no different from "suicide bombers" and only proves that religious fanaticism of any stripe (not just Islamic as some would imply) can translate into murderous terrorism.
Use the needle, then keep it ready for Eric Rudolph.
-Eric
Yet, God's means include the imprecatory psalms. We are too squeamish about those parts of God's Word, and think we should be nicer than God. When the leaders of the Church start leading the church in the praying of these psalms, with specific evildoers mentioned by name, legalized abortion will fade from the American scene. God does not need our lawless actions to enforce His judgement. When civil government refuses to execute its lawful function of protecting innocent life, God can and will.
But He waits for us to ask Him. Using His own Word.
The judicial process takes into account politics, religion, race, gender, and sexual orientation, nothwithstanding best efforts and protestations to the contrary. Ideally all murderers would receive fair trials and fast executions.
But let the abortionists continue to take in big bucks in blood money murdering innocent children. Ok.
No remorse, no glory.
I don't know how the abortionist faced death. Did he repent and cry out for mercy from God for his sins? I don't know. I doubt it (years of routinely killing preborn infants tends to harden the heart and conscience), therefore I conclude most likely, yes he will be in hell with his murderer.
The reason I have no doubt with regard to this former "minister" is that he defiantly and remorselessly proclaims his status as martyr and expects God to reward him for murdering two people. This tells me he does not know Jesus and has never repented of his sin.
I am not defending Hill. I am merely pointing out the incoherence in our legal system which Hill represents.
In a just society Hill's victims would have been executed years before Hill ever approached them.
I am also calling people on their facile and foolish comparison between Hill and fanatic Muslims.
Not only were the scale, actions and victims in the two cases completely different the motivations were entirely different as well.
Even Flip Benhem says this guy is a heretic.
Mr. Benham is certainly entitled to his opinion, but he has no authority to pronounce anyone orthodox or heterodox.
God needs no one to speak for Him. He wrote 66 books for that purpose. He speaks for Himself quite eloquently .
Really? So what was meant when Jesus said, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone."
We'll wait for your answer.
In your religion, God judges. Not you.
Why don't they drop the pretenses then and remove the blindfold on the lady?
Would you also support the anti-war activist who kills an Army General walking to work at his base?
Would you also support an environmentalist gunning down the CEO of a company that is polluting the rivers?
If you give the right to murder to Paul Hill, you must also give it to the Ted Kasinsky's and Jane Fonda's of the world.
What an odd thing to say in support of applying the death penalty, which IS killing people to scare other people the way we believe is morally correct. I realize she said 'innocent' people, but we are talking about 'innocent' baby butchers.
The differences in scale, actions, and victims do not negate the similarities between Hill and the jihadis. He, just like the fanatic muslims, believes that he can decide that it is God's will that certain people be murdered and he expects a reward in paradise for carrying out God's murder. If his "motivation" is a notion that some unborn baby will be saved, while the muslim jihadis' motivation is the destruction of Israel, that difference in "motivation" only masks their common perception of God as a condoner and planner of murders that they see themselves as "justified" in perpetrating.
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