WICHITA, Kan. – Scott Roeder made his first court appearance June 2 and was formally charged with the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. It was also the first time the public has seen him.
Roeder was arrested Sunday, May 31, just hours after Tiller was shot to death in the foyer of a Wichita church where he was serving as an usher. Tiller was one of the few doctors in the country who performs late-term abortions.
In Roeder's initial court appearance June 2, in which he appeared through a video link from the Sedgwick County Jail, a judge formally introduced charges of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault and ordered him to be held without bond.
Watch Roeder's Initial Court Appearance Here
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Fulston said the case will not be prosecuted as a death penalty case.
“Under the facts and circumstances that are known at this time, the election has been to go with first-degree murder,” Fulston said.
Fulston also added at a news conference June 2
(Video) that this case needs to be tried in the courts and not in public opinion. Foulston then answered a question about Roeder's chances of a fair trial.
"The question is better put to the individual jurors at some point in the future," she said.
Aside from a murder being premeditated and intentional, there are seven circumstances that qualify a capital case, according to the
Kansas statute.
Some examples include killing a law enforcement officer, a murder-for-hire, killing more than one person, or a murder involving a sexual assault.
“I wasn’t surprised at all to hear this was not a capital case,” said Kansas City attorney Joe Luby, who represents death penalty defendants through his non-profit Public Interest Litigation Clinic.
If the crime had occurred on the other side of the state line, Luby believes the odds are much better Roeder could face the death penalty.
“It is this kind of case that highlights the difference between Kansas’ relatively narrow statute and Missouri’s considerably broader one,” he said.
Roeder’s ex-wife tells NBC Action News the 51-year-old’s plunge into anti-abortion radicalism began in the ‘90s when he quit his job and joined anti-government and anti-abortion groups.
See More of What Lindsay Roeder Had to Say Here
Lindsay filed for divorce in 1996 after Scott was arrested for having explosives in his trunk. She says he was going to blow up an abortion clinic.
Roeder’s next court appearance was June 16. The hearing will be continued to June 30.He will be assigned to a public defender and was also ordered not to have any contact with Tiller’s family or the two witnesses he allegedly assaulted inside the church.
Roeder’s bond was raised to $20 million dollars last week.
