Des Moines activist happy with Roeder’s ‘necessity defense’ plan

Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach was surprised by the timing but happy to hear from the media that Scott Roeder would pursue a necessity defense after confessing to the murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller.

Des Moines anti-abortion activist Dave Leach appears in one of a series of Web videos arguing that killing doctors who perform abortions is justified, and that judges should allow the theory to be argued in court.

Leach told the Iowa Independent in an e-mail that he was not expecting to hear a decision from Roeder until Tuesday.

“But right after I got your e-mail he called and confirmed,” Leach said Monday afternoon.

Leach has been advocating to Roeder for months to use the necessity defense, even going so far as to draft a legal brief on his behalf. Roeder is charged with one count of first-degree murder in Tiller’s death and two counts of aggravated assault for threatening two ushers at the church where he shot Tiller on May 31. Roeder has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial in January.

Roeder confirmed in an interview with the Associated Press that he murdered Tiller but that it was necessary to stop him from continuing to perform abortions.

By stipulating to the facts of the case, Leach said the judge will have no choice but to allow the jury to hear the necessity defense, which says it is permissible to commit a crime if it stops a greater harm. Legal experts disagree, saying it is unlikely a judge would allow an argument that murder is justified to stop something that is protected by law.

Leach said now that Roeder has made his intentions clear, the public can begin to see how important this case is.

“Now, hopefully, the public can begin to hear about how essential this defense is to the Rule of Law in America,” he said. “Our everyday lives would become insane if the letter of every law were enforced even in situations where that would cause tragedy and death.”

Scott Roeder (mugshot)

In addition to crafting the defense, Leach, who is not an attorney, redrafted a document called “Defensive Action Statement 3^rd Edition,” which states the belief that juries should be allowed to rule on whether Roeder was justified in killing Tiller.

“We further declare that Scott Roeder’s jury, but not his judge, is qualified to weigh the fact question of ‘when life begins,’ which determines whether lethal force is justified to defend the lives of unborn children,” the document states.

The statement is signed by 21 anti-abortion activists, three of whom are serving prison sentences for actions against abortion providers.

Leach publishes a newsletter called “Prayer & Action News,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. Roeder was a contributor to the newsletter. Following Tiller’s murder, Leach’s association with Roeder garnered attention from the national media.

But Leach’s history of anti-abortion activism goes back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, Leach’s association with the accused killer of a Florida abortion doctor helped persuade U.S. marshals to guard the Planned Parenthood clinic in Des Moines.

In the January 1996 issue, Leach published the Army of God manual, which advocates the killing of the providers of abortion and contains bomb-making instructions. Because of this, he was fired from his job as a writer for an Ankeny newspaper.

In 2002, he tried to air videotape of patients entering a local Planned Parenthood clinic on public-access cable TV. Mediacom Communications Corp. decided it would not allow him to air the footage.