More Delays By Morrison: Is he laying out his alibi to let Tiller off?
Kansas AG won't decide on case against abortion doctor until June
By JOHN HANNA
Associated Press Writer
TOPEKA, Kan. - Attorney General Paul Morrison said Friday that his office is still investigating one of the few U.S. doctors performing late-term abortions and won't decide whether to prosecute him until at least June.
Dr. George Tiller had been accused of performing illegal late-term abortions by Morrison's predecessor, Phill Kline. But a judge dismissed 30 misdemeanor charges Kline filed against Tiller in December in Sedgwick County for jurisdictional reasons.
An abortion rights Democrat, Morrison unseated Kline, an anti-abortion Republican, in last year's election. Morrison launched his own investigation after taking office Jan. 8.
Morrison said March 28 that he expected to make a decision within a few weeks; an aide acknowledged earlier this week that the investigation was taking longer than expected but said it was "finishing up."
"We're still collecting information, believe it or not," Morrison told The Associated Press during an interview Friday. "We're shooting for some time in June. We're tapping our toe to get this thing off high center, along with everybody else."
"Whatever we decide," he added, "nobody's going to be able to say that we didn't look at this thing inside-out, backwards and forwards and under a neutron microscope."
Abortion opponents, who don't trust Morrison to aggressively pursue potential wrongdoing, remain skeptical, noting that Tiller helped finance at least several hundred thousand dollars of advertising designed to defeat Kline in 2002 and 2006.
"Looking is one thing. Doing something about it something else," said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group. "Who cares how close you look if you don't share the information or do anything that means anything?"
In his complaint against Tiller, Kline alleged the doctor performed 15 illegal late-term abortions in 2003 for patients aged 10 to 22 and failed to properly report the details to state health officials.
Kansas law allows a doctor to abort a viable fetus after the 21st week of pregnancy if doing so is necessary to save the woman or girl's life or to prevent "substantial and irreversible" harm to "a major bodily function," which state officials have interpreted as including mental health.
Kline alleged that Tiller performed the late-term abortions for reasons such as a patient's "single-episode" depression.
But Tiller's attorneys have said repeatedly that Kline's charges were without merit, that the doctor hasn't broken any laws and that Kline's investigation was driven by his opposition to abortion.
"We have always said we would cooperate fully with a professional prosecutor conducting a legitimate investigation," attorney Dan Monnat said. "The more thorough the investigation, the more clear Dr. Tiller's innocence will be."
Morrison said his office is still waiting to obtain some documents that weren't sought by Kline or his staff, but the new attorney general wasn't more specific.
Culp said Kansas residents won't have any way of judging how thorough Morrison's investigation has been.
"It's almost like he's more worried about what people are going to say afterward," Culp said. "It's almost like he's setting up a situation where he doesn't do anything."
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Kline's case was State v. Tiller, No. 06CR2961 in Sedgwick County.
On the Net:
Attorney general's office: http://www.ksag.org/home/
Tiller's clinic: http://www.drtiller.com
Kansans for Life: http://www.kfl.org