The Death of a Tiller Judge

17 Oct., 2011

The AP reported in November of 2007 on the demise of retired federal Judge Patrick Kelly.  Whatever good he might have done in his life is eclipsed by the fact that he ordered anti-abortion protesters to cease interfering with Tiller’s murders.

Cancer consumed him as he finished his time in Lakeview Funeral Home.

The particular ignominy of his legal career proceeded from the 1991 “Summer of Mercy” abortion protests in Wichita. Thousands of abortion resisters were arrested during the 45-day event, which was organized by the anti-abortion Operation Rescue.

Randall Terry dubbed Kelly a “Nazi judge” when Kelly ordered protesters to stop blocking the entrance of the clinic of abortionist George Tiller.  The appellation was not inappropriate.  Nazi-like, he did not stop at simply issuing an order and threatening prosecution; he ordered special protection from U.S. marshals.  The U.S. marshals were to provide security.  Kelly turned the marshals into Nazi-like criminals indeed. (Witness the recent prosecutions of the likes of John Demjanjuk at age 91 in 2011, 70 years after the crime.  It took seven decades to make that “marshal” a criminal.  It may take that long belong before the deeds of these agents of the court are damned for their deed of submission to such an edict.)

The  Court of Appeals struck down Kelly’s ruling on abortion protesters. But Congress sullied itself with the same criminal action that Kelly perpetrated by passing FACE.

FACE is the very law (which includes civil statutes as well we criminal) by which your author has been sued by Planned Parenthood and saddled with a $1 million debt for writing A Time to Kill and making it available for purchase at a public meeting of anti-abortion activists.

Kelly, to conclude, is gone from this world.  But his end is not yet.  Judgment Day will come for all.