Amid Storm, Abortion Foe Is Executed

As a violent thundershower made the lights inside Florida State Prison flicker and dim, Paul Hill, a former Christian minister, was put to death Wednesday evening for the murders of a doctor who performed abortions and his unarmed escort.

Hill, 49, became the first person executed in the U.S. for killing an abortion provider. Before receiving a lethal cocktail of chemicals in his right arm, the condemned man called upon fellow abortion opponents to take any action necessary to halt it.

“If you believe abortion is a lethal force, you should oppose the force and do what you have to to stop it,” Hill said after being strapped to a gurney for administration of his death sentence. “May God help you to protect the unborn as you would want to be protected.”

Hill had been found guilty of fatally shooting a Pensacola, Fla., physician employed at an abortion clinic and a retired military officer working as a volunteer clinic escort in 1994. At a news conference Tuesday, Hill expressed no regrets or remorse about the slayings, and said he was “expecting a great reward in Heaven” for his actions.

Abortion providers, as well as some foes of the death penalty, had expressed great concern that Hill’s execution might rekindle violent attacks on U.S. abortion clinics and their employees after at least two years of relative calm.

Death threats against Florida officials, including Gov. Jeb Bush, were made in letters sent to state officials about Hill’s execution, but the governor said they would not compel him to order a stay. “I’m not going to be bullied,” Bush, the president’s younger brother, said Tuesday.

Hill smiled and was in a “very positive” mood as he pronounced his last words, said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections. The convicted killer was given the lethal injection at 6:02 p.m. Eastern time and was officially declared dead six minutes later, Ivey said.

Officials said security at the prison outside this northern Florida town was the tightest it had been since serial killer Ted Bundy went to his death in the electric chair here in 1989. Fearing violent retaliation by Hill sympathizers, police in cities throughout Florida also reinforced surveillance and security at abortion clinics.

Across the state highway from the prison, about 50 abortion foes gathered under the eyes of law enforcement officials to sing hymns, offer prayers for Hill and voice their outrage over his looming execution.

Eric Eggleton, 26, a warehouse worker from Knoxville, Tenn., carried a sign that read: “Paul Hill is a hero.”

“He stopped a mass murderer from killing innocent people,” Eggleton said. “There are many people who hold Hill’s convictions. It [his execution] will inspire them to act.”

Hill was scheduled to be taken from his cell to the execution chamber at 6 p.m. As the hour marked for his death approached, low, black thunderclouds darkened the sky over the prison, and bolts of lightning fell on the flat green countryside behind it.

Hill’s sympathizers called the lightning and ear-splitting thunder divine signs. “You don’t think God knows what’s going on over there?” Neal Horsley, a Carrollton, Ga., publisher of an antiabortion journal, shouted as he motioned toward the prison.

In the rain, the antiabortion protesters released yellow balloons at the hour of Hill’s death and sang “Amazing Grace.” Some wept with loud, heaving sobs; others prayed in silence as they knelt in the wet grass.

Inside the prison, as the time allotted to Hill dwindled to minutes, the storm was fully audible. “Claps of thunder preceded his final statement,” Ivey said. “The thunder and the lightning were very ominous inside the death chamber.”

Associated Press correspondent Ron Word, one of 12 journalists allowed to witness Hill’s death, said the lights in the execution room flickered on and off. Soon after receiving the dose of chemicals, Word said, Hill showed no further sign of life.

“When the execution started, he pursed his lips a couple of times, and looked like he was kind of blowing out from his mouth,” Word said. “After a minute, I saw no visible movement.”

Most mainstream groups opposed to abortion had repudiated Hill and the violent tactics he embraced. A handful of abortion foes, led by two brothers from California, had come to the prison to denounce him on religious grounds.

“Our concern is to defuse upcoming Paul Hills,” said Ruben Israel, 42, of Whittier, who carried a Bible in his carpenter’s belt. “No New Testament figures, that I know of anyway, killed for Jesus.”

The construction company owner was accompanied by his brother Mike, 38, a preacher, and about a dozen other protesters. They were kept separate from the Hill sympathizers.

A small number of death penalty opponents staged their own protest inside their separate cordon of yellow police tape.

On his final day, Hill awoke at 4:45 a.m. and read the Bible, Ivey said. Later in the morning, he met his wife, 18-year-old son and parents to bid them goodbye. He had already spoken for the last time with his two teenage daughters in the prison on Tuesday.

Until an hour before his death, Hill met with the Rev. Don Spitz, a Pentecostal minister who endorsed his shooting of Dr. John Britton, 69, and retired Air Force Col. James Barrett, 74. The two prayed and read passages from Revelations, Psalms and the Song of Solomon.

For his last meal, Hill requested charbroiled steak, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, a baked potato, a salad with grated cheese, bacon bits and Thousand Island dressing, orange sherbet and iced tea, Ivey said.