November | 2007 | Monnat & Spurrier Attorneys at Law

Nov 30, 2007
Associated Press
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by Carl Manning

TOPEKA, Kan. – The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that a Sedgwick County grand jury investigation into a doctor who performs late-term abortions can go forward.

The ruling, issued Thursday, dismissed a petition filed last month by Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few physicians who performs late-term abortions. He challenged the legality of the grand jury proceedings.

The grand jury investigation in Wichita, like one started in Johnson County looking into Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, was created by a citizen petition drive led by abortion foes.

Kansas is one of only six states that permits citizens to petition to create a grand jury.

Abortion foes hailed the ruling. Tiller’s attorneys, Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, said in a statement issued Thursday that the petition drive was politically motivated.

“It’s been repeatedly determined that Dr. Tiller is innocent of any wrongdoing and we just regret that taxpayers’ dollars are now going to have to be spent to enable this grand jury to move forward,” they said.

A Johnson County district judge on Tuesday denied Planned Parenthood’s request to block the start of the panel, and the organization had planned to appeal. But Planned Parenthood attorney Bob Eye said Friday that the clinic would not appeal, saying the ruling issued in the Tiller case would likely apply to its case.

“We respect the court’s decision. We think the similarities would have resulted in the same decision, and we aren’t here to waste the court’s time,” Eye said.

Impaneling a 15-member grand jury in the Planned Parenthood case will begin Dec. 10 and it can meet for up to 90 days, although that can be extended by the district court. It takes 12 grand jurors to issue a recommendation.

Chief Judge Michael Corrigan in Sedgwick County said he didn’t know when the grand jury there will begin its work.

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman called Planned Parenthood’s decision another victory on top of the Supreme Court decision.

“We are celebrating these victories today and are looking forward to seeing justice done, both in Sedgwick and Johnson counties, through the grand jury process. We finally have some hope that the system is beginning to function as it should,” Newman said in a statement.

Abortion opponents want the grand jury to look into whether Planned Parenthood’s Overland Park clinic provided illegal late-term abortions. Eye said no late-term abortions are done at the clinic and Planned Parenthood is innocent of any wrongdoing.

Planned Parenthood already faces a 107-count criminal complaint filed by Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline in October. The complaint includes 29 misdemeanor counts of providing unlawful late-term abortions.

Kline, an anti-abortion Republican, started investigating Planned Parenthood in 2003 when he was attorney general. After a court battle, he eventually gained access to some of the clinic’s patient medical records.

Paul Morrison, an abortion-rights Democrat who defeated Kline last year to become attorney general, reviewed the records Kline obtained and found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood.

However, Morrison filed 19 misdemeanor charges against Tiller in June, alleging Tiller failed to get a second opinion on some late-term abortions from an independent second physician, as required by law.

By CARL MANNING
Associated Press Writer

Nov 29, 2007
Associated Press
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by Carl Manning

TOPEKA, Kan. – The state’s highest court says a Sedgwick County grand jury created by a citizen petition drive led by abortion foes can proceed with its investigation of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the nation who performs late-term abortions.

The order issued Thursday allowing the grand jury to move forward also dismissed a petition filed last month by the Wichita physician challenging the legality of the grand jury proceedings. At that time, the court put the grand jury on hold until it could review the case.

“The petition should be and is herby denied, and the case is dismissed. Accordingly, the stay of the grand jury proceedings is lifted and the motions to intervene are dismissed as moot,” Chief Justice Kay McFarland wrote for the court.

Anti-abortion groups were part of a drive to collect enough signatures to force a grand jury investigation. Kansas is one of six states where residents can petition for a grand jury.

They used the same tactics to create a grand jury in Johnson County to investigate Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri which operates a clinic in Overland Park.

On Tuesday, a district judge rejected Planned Parenthood’s motion to stop that investigation but agreed to move back the date for convening the panel by a week to Dec. 10. Planned Parenthood said it would appeal.

As expected, Tiller’s attorneys, Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, were unhappy with the ruling while abortion foes called it a triumph.

“We’re disappointed that today the Supreme Court didn’t put a halt to what is clearly a politically motivated grand jury,” the attorneys said in a statement. “It’s been repeatedly determined that Dr. Tiller is innocent of any wrongdoing and we just regret that taxpayers’ dollars are now going to have to be spent to enable this grand jury to move forward.”

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansas for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion organization, called it a “great ruling.”

“Too often in this world, the law changes when the issue is abortion and I’m gratified that didn’t happen in this case and the justices were true to the law and the people of Kansas,” she said.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman called the ruling “a pleasant surprise,” adding, “Victories in the pro-life movement are precious and few and we will take every one we can get.”

The grand jury Tiller wanted to block is the second one abortion foes have forced the county to create in 18 months to investigate him. Last year, a grand jury reviewed the deaths of a Texas woman who had an abortion at Tiller’s clinic but issued no indictments.

Impaneling the grand jury had been scheduled to start Oct. 30 when the justices halted the proceedings.

Chief District Judge Michael Corrigan in Sedgwick County said he will set another date for impaneling a grand jury but he didn’t know when that would be.

He said some 70 people will be summoned and 15 will be sworn in. The panel can meet for up to 90 days, although that can be extended by the court. It takes 12 grand jurors to issue a recommendation.

Abortion foes say Tiller has violated a 1998 law restricting late-term abortions and that potential violations have been ignored for years. His attorneys have said repeatedly the allegations are unfounded and that he has been cleared in previous state investigations.

In June, Attorney General Paul Morrison filed 19 misdemeanor charges against, alleging he failed to get a second opinion on some late-term abortions from an independent second physician, as required by law.

But many abortion opponents believe Morrison, an abortion-rights Democrat, should have focused on allegations that Tiller violated restrictions designed to limit late-term abortions to medical emergencies.

The case is George R. Tiller, M.D., v. Honorable Michael Corrigan, presiding judge, Paul Buchanan, assigned senior judge, No. 99,434.

By CARL MANNING
Associated Press Writer

Nov 10, 2007
Associated Press

GODDARD, Kan. – A group of Republican legislators says the Kansas Supreme Court overstepped its authority when it put on hold a grand jury investigation into a Wichita doctor who is one of the nation’s few late-term abortion providers.

At a news conference at a Lake Afton lodge on Friday, the 17 legislators said the Supreme Court should allow Sedgwick County to move forward with empaneling a grand jury to investigate Dr. George Tiller.

The grand jury was initiated by anti-abortion groups that circulated citizen petitions. Kansas is one of the few states that allow citizens to petition to empanel a grand jury.

The court last month put the grand jury on hold in response to a petition filed Tiller. In the order, Chief Justice Kay McFarland said that it was issued “by virtue of the unique circumstances of this case and to allow full consideration of the petition.”

Tiller’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, said that politics, not the law, is the driving force against Tiller. He said the lawmakers at Friday’s conference “get re-elected by fomenting opposition to a woman’s right to choose.”

“I seriously doubt the court will be bullied by these politicians into acting more quickly or acting at all,” he said.

The Associated Press

Nov 02, 2007
by Ron Sylvester

A Sedgwick County District Court judge heard arguments, but did not rule, on whether the prosecution of a Wichita abortion provider is constitutional.

A lawyer for Wichita abortion provider George Tiller began presented arguments this afternoon, asking a Judge Clark Owens to dismiss the misdemeanor criminal charges against the doctor.

The state has charged Tiller with using a doctor who wasn’t sufficiently independent to handle referrals for late-term abortions performed in his clinic.

Lee Thompson told Owens that the Kansas law requiring doctors to get another referral before performing late-term abortions puts an “undue burden” on women, violating the U.S. Constitution.

Kansas law requires doctors such as Tiller to get referrals from other doctors within the state in order to perform abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy.

Thompson said Tiller gets referrals from doctors all over the nation, sending patients to get abortions because of dangers to their health .

“You can have a referral from the world’s foremost expert, but when you come to Kansas, it doesn’t count,” if the referring doctor is out of state, Thompson said.

“This law puts a whole Byzantine set of hurdles, which serve no logical purpose except to keep a woman from exercising her constitutional right to seek an abortion,” Thompson said.

Thompson said the doctor who provided the referrals worked out of Tiller’s office only for security reasons brought on by threats from abortion opponents.

Jared Maag, an assistant Kansas attorney general, said that if the law limited a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, then Tiller couldn’t operate.

“The number of abortions done belie his arguments,” Maag said.

“He performs thousands,” Maag added, referring to Tiller.

Maag said the question is simple: Did Tiller have an illegal association with a doctor who gave concurring medical opinions on the health status of women receiving late-term abortions in Wichita?

“We have evidence of that,” Maag said. “And that’s something a jury should decide.”

Through his lawyers, Tiller also asked Judge Owens to allow him to have a panel of 12 jurors. Usually jury trials in misdemeanor cases get a panel of six.

In the second part of the hearing, Dan Monnat argued on Tiller’s behalf that a Kansas law dictating that misdemeanor defendants receive only six jurors defies the state’s constitution.

Monnat said the state’s Supreme Court has said that Kansas adopted its bill of rights from Ohio’s constitution in 1859. But Ohio’s high court had ruled six years earlier that all criminal defense must have a jury of 12.

Arguments by the state that the U.S. Supreme Court had already approved six-member juries for misdemeanors, “isn’t comparing apples and oranges, but rather colonists and cowboys,” Monnat said.

“We don’t care what the framers of the U.S. Constitution meant,” Monnat said. “What we’re concerned with is what the framers of the Kansas constitution meant.

“You can also say we’re comparing Buckeyes and Jayhawks,” Monnat said.

Maag, however, argued that Kansas did pattern its bill of rights after the U.S. Constitution. Maag also pointed out that the Ohio case of 1853 has been overruled by that state’s Supreme Court.

“So Ohio does not have to be bound by that case, but Kansas does?” Maag said.

Maag said that even looking to common law history doesn’t point to any specific numbers for the “right to trial by jury.”

“It’s not set in stone; it never has been,” Maag said. “It’s up to the states to decide, and we have a law that does that.”

Judge Owens said he expected to take several weeks to rule on the constitutionality issue.

By RON SYLVESTER

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