Murderous Abortion Foe Awaits Death

He told a TV audience on the Phil Donahue show that killing an abortion doctor was as justifiable as murdering Hitler. Then one July morning, he took a pump-action shotgun and shot a doctor and his escort dead outside a women’s clinic in Florida’s Panhandle.

On Wednesday, Paul Hill is scheduled to die at Florida State Prison. The former Christian minister, a murderer in the eyes of the state but a hero and a future martyr to some, will become the first convicted killer of an abortion provider to be executed in the United States.

His followers call the capital penalty against him a crime in itself, while abortion providers are worried it will revive radical, potentially lethal opposition against them.

“We expect the execution will trigger further violence,” said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a Washington-based professional association of abortion clinics and providers. “Between now and the end of the year, we are extremely concerned about abortion providers being targeted for murder and extreme violence.”

The Rev. Don Spitz, a Pentecostal minister from Chesapeake, Va., Hill’s spiritual advisor, has been visiting him in his north Florida prison. Spitz, who contends Hill did a “good thing” by “saving the lives of unborn children,” also predicted that the death sentence, if carried out, will spark violent outrage.

“I’ve received innumerable e-mails and phone calls from people who express deep anguish and fury that this has happened to him,” Spitz said. “Since the very beginning, there has been a feeling that if Paul Hill was executed, there would be a rise in reaction.”

As Hill’s hour in Florida’s death chamber nears, Spitz expects antiabortion activists from throughout the United States to converge on the prison near Starke. An anti-death penalty group plans its own demonstration Wednesday, and has called on Gov. Jeb Bush to halt the execution by lethal injection and instead sentence Hill, 49, to life imprisonment without parole.

“Hill committed his crime to get a platform to express his agenda,” said Abraham J. Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. “Now, he’s being given another 15 minutes of fame and he’s going to have a press conference where he can tell the whole world: ‘Go do what I did.’ It’s irresponsible and dangerous to give a terrorist the opportunity to encourage more terrorism.”

Death-threat letters protesting Hill’s pending execution, each accompanied by a bullet, have been received in the mail by Florida Atty. Gen. Charlie Crist and two top-ranking state prison officials, said Kristen Perezluha, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The anonymous letters are being investigated, she said.

The FBI, in its latest weekly bulletin to state and local law enforcement agencies, notified them of Hill’s pending execution. “We have no specific information that any violence is planned, but are requesting local law enforcement pass along any information they may have,” a federal law enforcement official in Washington said.

The National Abortion Federation, whose 400 members provide more than half of the estimated 1.2 million abortions performed annually in the United States, has already alerted clinics and their personnel to be on “high security alert” and advised them on security precautions, Saporta said.

In the last decade there have been at least 10 attempts to kill doctors or others involved in abortion services in the United States and Canada, either by firearms or bombs, according to the Abortion Federation. The most recent killing was in 1998, when Dr. Barnett Slepian was shot and killed in his home in Amherst, N.Y.

According to police reports, Hill shot Dr. John Britton, 69, and his volunteer driver and escort, James Barrett, 74, in the head with a shotgun as they arrived at a Pensacola abortion clinic in a pickup on July 29, 1994. Barrett’s wife, June, was also injured but survived.

The previous year, the lanky, blond and bespectacled Hill had gone on “Donahue” to defend the 1993 slaying of an abortion clinic doctor in the same Florida city. The action was as moral, Hill maintained, as killing Hitler or someone who was murdering children on a playground.

“I’m advocating the consistent theology of the Bible, and that is that we must protect innocent life,” Hill told the television audience.

Michael Griffin, the man convicted of the shooting death of Dr. David Gunn, the first Pensacola abortion clinic doctor killed in 1993, is serving a life term in prison. According to the National Abortion Federation, it was the first murder of an abortion provider in the country. It galvanized Hill.

The Miami native, who attended a religious seminary in Jackson, Miss., had been ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church of America, but lost his positions at two South Carolina churches and another church in West Palm Beach, Fla. He joined another, smaller denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, but later renounced the ministry. When he shot Britton and his escort, he was working as an independent auto-painting contractor.

He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, and smiled when the sentence of death was pronounced at his trial.

Last month, in a letter to the Miami Herald from his one-man cell, Hill said he was at peace with himself and would likely kill again in the same circumstances.

“I believe that as time goes on and more people recognize the duty to use the individual and corporate means necessary to defend the unborn, that the opposition to abortion will become more intense,” Hill wrote. “To misquote John Paul Jones, ‘We have not yet begun to fight.’ ”

For many antiabortion activists, Hill’s action and the use of Holy Scripture to justify it are abhorrent. “Most Christians in the pro-life movement, they know what Paul Hill did is wrong,” said Daniel Michael, who operates a ministry with his wife in Highland, Ill., that tries to persuade women intending to have abortions to give birth.

“Even if a man took a lot of innocent lives and murdered a lot of babies, Paul Hill has no authority to go and kill him,” Michael said. “According to the Bible, Paul Hill must die, because he took an innocent life.”

Gov. Bush, a Roman Catholic, has called the notion that Hill was acting in the name of God “an incredible distortion of the Christian faith.”

“This man brutally murdered people, cold-blooded, premeditated,” Bush, the president’s brother, told reporters last month. “To do it for life’s sake makes it even sicker, in my opinion.”

Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for the Republican governor, said that barring a successful last-minute legal challenge, Hill’s execution will go forward Wednesday evening. “He was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers,” she said.

Hill plans to meet with reporters Tuesday. As his execution date nears, Hill is “in a good frame of mind, in good spirits,” said Spitz, who said he spent two hours with him in prison Wednesday. The condemned man is reading the Bible, praying, writing letters and editing his writings, including a book titled “I Shot an Abortionist,” Spitz said.

The clergyman plans to be with Hill until an hour before the execution, so they can pray and read from the Old and New Testaments together. Hill did have one request, the minister said. He wants Spitz to bring a New American Standard version of the Bible for their final session together, because he doesn’t like the much older King James version the minister normally uses.