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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Paul Jennings Hill

Paul Jennings Hill (February 6, 1954 - September 3, 2003), a former Presbyterian minister and anti-abortion activist connected to the extremist Army of God, was convicted of the murders of abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his driver James Barrett outside a Pensacola, Florida abortion clinic on July 29, 1994. Sentenced to the death penalty under Florida law, Hill was executed by lethal injection.

Paul Hill's actions in 1994 were part of a wave of anti-abortion violence in the United States in the 1990s, in which militant abortion opponents bombed abortion clinics and murdered doctors and other abortion clinic employees. Though generally disowned by mainstream anti-abortion activists, Hill and others saw themselves as carrying out resistance against evils that could not be prevented by normal legal or political means, in the mold of violent abolitionists like John Brown. In a statement before his execution, Hill said that he felt no remorse for his actions, and that he expected "a great reward in Heaven."

In addition to the two murders, Hill wounded June Barrett, the wife of James Barrett, in the 1994 incident.

According to Time magazine, Hill left behind a manuscript manifesto describing how to stalk and kill abortion doctors. Hill's backers promised him they would have it published.

Hill was the first person executed in the United States for anti-abortion violence. At the time of Hill's death, Michael Griffin was serving a life sentence for the murder of an abortion doctor in Pensacola in 1993, and James Kopp was in prison for the killing of a physician in Buffalo, New York. Eric Rudolph was awaiting trial for a 1998 bombing that killed a police officer at an Alabama abortion clinic. John Salvi had committed suicide in prison two years after killing two receptionists in 1994 in Massachusetts.



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