By John Connolly
WICHITA, Kansas, November 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Operation Rescue filed a motion of intervention with the Kansas Supreme Court on Friday, attempting to push forward legal proceedings against infamous abortionist George Tiller that were indefinitely stalled by an illegal measure by Chief Justice Kay McFarland.
The Writ of Mandamus, filed by Tiller, asks the Kansas Supreme Court to ignore state law and not impanel the grand jury called for by the statutory citizen petition process of Kansas. State law requires a grand jury to be convened within sixty days of the appropriate petition, but Chief Justice Kay McFarland has indefinitely stayed the grand jury against this law, citing undefined special circumstances to the case.
The sixty-day deadline passed on November 6. A group of Kansas Legislators have released a statement indicating that the Court had overstepped its bounds in its disregard for the state law.
Justice Michael Corrigan, chief judge in Kansas’ 18th Court District, called Tiller’s petitions “absurd” in his own motion filed on Friday. “Just as a demand that there be no district attorney or no attorney general is absurd, it is absurd for any citizen to demand that no grand jury be summoned,” he said in a legal brief. “One cannot challenge an indictment which has not yet, and may never be, issued by a grand jury.”
The intervention of Operation Rescue is designed to prompt the Kansas judicial branch to stop making exceptions to the law for Tiller, who is known to have performed numerous late-term abortions on the grounds of medical treatment of supposed “maternal depression.” Operation Rescue filed for intervention in response to numerous references to Operation Rescue in Tiller’s Writ of Mandamus.
“Nothing less than the rule of law is at stake here,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Tiller is demanding that he be treated differently than any other subject of a grand jury investigation in Kansas history. He wants the law set aside just for him. This turns the ‘Equal Justice’ doctrine on its head.”
Speaking to LifeSiteNews today, Newman called attention to pro-abortion hypocrisy concerning the law. “In 1991, when Operation Rescue was working hard to shut down abortion clinics, the mantra from the left was ‘work within the law,” he said. “We have done all that, the work of modifying the law, the work of getting legislators who agree with our ideology into office. Now we’re asking the judges to enforce it, and they aren’t. They are becoming the activists, imposing their opinions outside of the law.”
See previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
New Kansas Attorney General Immediately Fires Prosecutor of Abortionist Tiller
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011107.html
Kansas Abortionist Killed Late-Term Babies for “Maternal Depression”: Fox News
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/nov/06110606.html
Abortion Clinic Caught Shredding Documents as Kansas Court Considers Mandating Records Release
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05090601.html