| Fundamentalist christian killer expects reward in heaven { September 3 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96286,00.htmlhttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96286,00.html
Anti-Abortionist Says He Expects 'a Great Reward in Heaven'
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
STARKE, Fla. — Paul Hill (search), a former minister who gunned down an abortion doctor, said he feels no remorse and suggested the state will be making him a martyr when he becomes the first person executed in the United States for anti-abortion violence.
Barring an unlikely last-minute stay, the 49-year-old former Presbyterian (search) minister will be put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 1994 murders in Pensacola of Dr. John Britton and his escort, retired Air Force Lt. Col. James Herman Barrett.
Barrett's wife, June, was wounded in the shootings outside the Ladies Center in Pensacola (search). Hill has not appealed.
"The sooner I am executed ... the sooner I am going to heaven," Hill said in a jailhouse interview. "I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse."
"More people should act as I have acted," Hill added.
Abortion-rights groups worry that Hill's execution will trigger reprisals by those who share his steadfast belief that violence to stop abortion is justified. Several Florida officials connected to the case received threatening letters last week, accompanied by rifle bullets.
Gov. Jeb Bush, who was named in one of those threatening letters, said Tuesday the threats would not keep him from carrying out the law.
"I'm not going to be bullied," Bush said.
Bush also said: "I'm not going to change the deeply held views that I have on (the death penalty) because others have deeply held views that disagree.
"I totally respect them. And they should respect what the rule of law is here in our state."
Death penalty opponents have also pointed to the prospect of violence as a reason to stop this execution in particular.
"We're very concerned that Paul Hill's call for violence may be picked up by any person to whom God speaks," said Abe Bonowitz, the head of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "That could be prevented. It should be."
Hill, a father of three, has supporters who have maintained a Web site in his honor, with snapshots and ballads, but most major anti-abortion groups have repudiated him.
Some of his backers liken him to John Brown, the abolitionist hanged for his crimes. One militant anti-abortion group, Missionaries to the Unborn, likens Hill to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who was executed after joining the plot to assassinate Hitler.
"Paul Hill is being martyred tomorrow, and that's wrong," said Bonowitz.
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