THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 6, 1994 TAG: 9410060505
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE CLARY, LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: MIAMI LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
In the first prosecution of its kind, a former minister was found guilty Wednesday of killing an abortion clinic doctor and his volunteer escort in violation of a new law that makes it a federal crime to harm or interfere with those who provide legal abortions.
As he had throughout the three-day trial in a Pensacola, Fla., courtroom, defendant Paul Hill, 40, showed little emotion when the verdict of the 12-member jury was read. Later, he smiled benignly.
Convicted of violating three counts of the federal law, Hill could be sentenced to life in prison when he is sentenced Dec. 9. He was also found guilty of a federal firearms violation.
In January, Hill is to be tried on state murder charges and could get the death penalty in the July 29 shotgun slayings of Dr. John B. Britton, 69, and the escort, James H. Barrett, 74.
Acting as his own lawyer, Hill called no witnesses. Nor did he cross-examine any of the dozen or so prosecution witnesses who placed him at the early-morning scene of the killings outside the Ladies Center in Pensacola.
Hill's terse closing statement was nearly a carbon-copy of his opening statement: ``This government is unjust because it does not protect human life. To the extent we take part in this evil, we must answer to God. May God help us all.''
A former Presbyterian minister well-known for advocating violence to stop abortions, Hill was the first person to be charged and tried under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law, passed four months ago.
Opponents of abortion charge that the law will do nothing to stop fanatics such as Hill, but will make it harder for anti-abortion demonstrators to make their case outside abortion clinics.
But abortion-rights advocates welcomed the statute as evidence that the U.S. Justice Department under the Clinton administration would take an aggressive approach to halting anti-abortion violence. ILLUSTRATION: Paul Hill also is awaiting trial in state court Jan. 30 on
charges of murder and attempted murder that could send him to the
electric chair.
KEYWORDS: TRIAL VERDICT ABORTION MURDER ABORTION CLINIC by CNB