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Posted on 04/09/2005 12:42:22 PM PDT by wagglebee
A protester arrested by District of Columbia police for holding a jar containing a human fetus was found not guilty of breaking a centuries-old law meant to deal with health issues that could arise if a dead body was not properly disposed of.
D.C. Magistrate Judge J. Dennis Doyle acquitted Jeff White, saying that his grasp of the jar in front of a Planned Parenthood abortuary was too fleeting to conclusively demonstrate that he was breaking a century-old statute prohibiting the display of a dead body or a part of a dead body.
"It just doesn't do it beyond a reasonable doubt," Doyle said.
According to today's Washington Post, the judges decision was handed down nearly a year after White's arrest outside the abortion mill where he and others were holding a counter-demonstration to an abortion rights rally. Prosecutors charged White, a 47-year-old lay minister from Lake Arrowhead, Calif., with keeping and exposing a dead body or body part.
White, who the Post explained lectures at schools and colleges and keeps a collection of human fetuses as part of his teaching work to demonstrate human development had only momentary possession of the jar containing the fetus and said he disagreed with displaying it at the time.
The fetus caught the attention of police officers posted at Planned Parenthood last April 24. It was in a glass jar and in the hands of another activist, who was showing it to a person recording the event with a video camera.
Court records showed that as police officers approached, the activist passed the jar to White, who testified that he took the container because it was not the appropriate time or place for such a display. White said that he wanted to avoid any problems that might arise. The second activist was not arrested, and police said they lost him in the crowd.
By the time police officers reached the group, the jar was in White's grasp, and it was quickly seized by a police supervisor, according to testimony and the video recording. The video later wound up on the Internet.
In acquitting White, Judge Doyle said that even if he interpreted the law as covering an act such as White's, he could not find that White's brief grasp of the jar would qualify as "keeping" the body for the purpose of displaying it. And that, he noted, would assume that the fetus was in fact a human body, a matter he chose not to address.
After the verdict, White wondered why he was arrested and speculated that it had everything to do with his antiabortion stance.
"Why," he asked the Post, "did the District of Columbia take this case to court? What was the harm to the District of Columbia? What was the threat to the District of Columbia?"
While the baby butchers get police protection.
Pro-life ping.
I wonder who the baby in the jar was....
So it's the government's official position now that an aborted baby is a dead body and not simply a glorified gallstone? That's new.
Good point.
So the law concerned a dead body? Are they admitting a fetus is a body? Doesn't that make the "body" a human being?
No matter what obscure law the prosecutor dredged up to cover this JBT's ass, he should be named in the article. Passing around a jar containing a foetus is no danger to anyone. The police were making up rules on their own, and THAT should cost this "police supervisor" his job and his future job prospects.
I just had a letter from the Life Legal Defense Foundation, which was helping defend Jeff in this case.
Their position was, IF this fetus is a human being, THEN the abortion clinic is guilty of killing human beings. IF fetuses are NOT human, then why the arrest?
Typical that this judge let Jeff off on a technicality instead, so as not to have to confront the real issue, whether or not a fetus is a human being.
Jeff has suffered a good deal as it is, because NOW and Planned Parenthood got him convicted in California many years ago under the RICO laws (intended to be used against professional mobsters) for peacefully picketing in front of an abortion clinic. Essentially PP argued that all pro lifers are members of a violent conspiracy against abortion clinics, and of course the liberal judge agreed. So Jeff was unable to earn a salary for many years because PP would have taken it. hard to raise a large family in that position, but he appears to have done so very successfully.
Being a liberal means never having to use logic or be acquainted with facts.
Planned Parenthood is one of the most dangerous organizations in the history of our nation, I am amazed that such a large portion of sociey considers them respectable.
Just a blob of tissue huh? I agree with Tadams8591 - good point!
Waitaminnitt!!!!! I was always told by the Feminazis that a fetus was a microscopic blob of tissue? How could the cops see a miscroscopic ANYTHING in the jar that guy was carrying? Did they have microscopes with which to view this inconceivably tiny blob of protoplasm?
"...found not guilty of breaking a centuries-old law meant to deal with health issues that could arise if a dead body was not properly disposed of..."
It is not a body, it is "non-viable" tissue or perhaps it is tissue that "would not have lived a quality life" (much as can be said on everyone in prison with a life sentence or possibly even the poor). < /sarcasm >
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What do you mean who? It's a just a clump of cells! (sarcasm)
But .. the Judge made the right decision - which may prove that the words "impeachment of the judiciary" may already be having an effect.
Wonderful news, thanks.
The DNC should adopt that as their symbol. the "kid in a jar" would make a nice bumper sticker also for the twisted and mentally challenged party.
The judge chickened out. It is illegal to display a human body in this way. The judge skipped the human body definition, and dismissed by ruling whatever it was, it was not displayed. A very nice dodge.
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