evolution

A Sedgwick County judge has agreed to hear from soon-to-be-ex-Attorney General Phill Kline and Sedgwick County DA Nola Foulston regarding the former’s charges against Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller.

The charges against Dr Tiller included charges that he performed illegal late-term abortions. These were dismissed by the judge last week within hours of their having been presented at the request of Foulston, who argued that Kline didn’t have the authority to bring the case, citing Kansas statute that legal precedent seems to require the AG to consult with the several DAs before “unilaterally” bringing charges in their districts. I discussed these charges and their dismissal here.

Foulston’s office maintains that her question is focused solely on the issue of whether Kline has standing to bring the case rather than the merits of Kline’s case. I know next-to-nothing about Nola Foulston. Foulston is a Democrat; however, I have a difficult time believing that this is solely about politics. (If it is, she has a better sense about masking it than does Kline.) As I noted previously, there is a real legal argument here, one which will have effects on DAs across the state. She has been elected five times to the DA’s office, which she first entered in 1989, so it’s reasonable to assume that she’s at least somewhat popular in Wichita — which has always been a highly-polarized political environment.

And few figures in Wichita are more polarizing than George Tiller. Even I have called him “scum of the first order” (a characterization I stand by). Opponents of abortion call him “Tiller the Killer”* and condemn him with great fervor. Foulston has already been called a “crony” of Tiller’s by Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group. Supporters defend Tiller with fervor just as great. Wichita was the scene of near-riots in the early 1990s over the topic of abortion.

In any case, I believe that Kline’s motion will be quashed and that the charges will remain dismissed, unless Kline can make an overwhelming case for the overturning of legal precedent. He’s not that good of a civil/criminal attorney, so I don’t think it’s likely.

*: Removing the dash from the URL in this link gets you to the Web site of Dr Tiller’s clinic. There’s no inflammatory commentary there or anything, but I had to stop clicking around, for reasons that I think would be obvious.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 21:34 and is filed under kansas, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.