Kermit Gosnell Update: Convicted Pa. abortion doctor gets life in prison
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is escorted to a waiting police van upon leaving the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, Monday, May 13, 2013, after being convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies who were delivered alive and then killed with
scissors at his clinic./
AP Photo/Philadelphia Daily News, Yong Kim
(CBS/AP) PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia abortion doctor
convicted of killing three babies who were born alive in his clinic
agreed Tuesday to give up his right to an appeal and faces life in
prison but will be spared a death sentence.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell,
72, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of the
babies who were delivered alive and killed with scissors.
In a
case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate, former
clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal
abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies
who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his
assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he
referred to it.
Prosecutors agreed to two life sentences without
parole for two of the three first-degree murder convictions, and Gosnell
was to be sentenced Wednesday in the death of the third baby, an
involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of a patient and
hundreds of lesser counts.
Prosecutors had sought the death
penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person, and his victims
were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced
age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals
ran out.
Gosnell has said he considered himself a pioneering
inner-city doctor who helped desperate women get late-term abortions.
Defense lawyer Jack McMahon said before the sentencing deal that his
client's bid for acquittal was a battle.
"The media has been
overwhelmingly against him," McMahon said. "But I think the jury
listened to the evidence ... and they found what they found."
The
gruesome details of Gosnell's operation came out more than two years
ago during a grand jury investigation of prescription drug trafficking.
Authorities raiding Gosnell's clinic for drugs instead found bags and
bottles of fetuses, including jars of severed feet, along with
bloodstained furniture, dirty medical instruments and cats roaming the
premises.
Partisans on both sides of the nation's polarized
abortion debate were quick to weigh in after the verdict. Abortion foes
said the case helped to illustrate the disturbing reality of abortion.
"This
has helped more people realize what abortion is really about," said
David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life
Committee. He said he hopes the case results in more states passing
bills that prohibit abortion "once the unborn child can feel pain."
Supporters
of legalized abortion said the case offered a preview of what poor,
desperate young women could face if abortion is driven underground with
more restrictive laws.
"Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty and
will get what he deserves. Now, let's make sure these women are
vindicated by delivering what all women deserve: access to the full
range of health services including safe, high-quality and legal abortion
care," said Ilyse G. Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Pennsylvania
authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all its
abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell's facility was raided.
In the scandal's aftermath, two top state health officials were fired,
and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.
During the
trial, Gosnell proved a solitary figure from beginning to end, with no
friends or relatives in the courtroom, despite the fact he's been
married three times and has six children, nearly all of them adults.
Gosnell
did not testify, and called no witnesses in his defense. But McMahon
branded prosecutors "elitist" and "racist" for pursuing his client, who
is black and whose patients were mostly poor minorities.
"I
wanted to be an effective, positive force in the minority community,"
Gosnell told The Philadelphia Daily News in a 2010 interview. "I believe
in the long term I will be vindicated."
Gosnell was also
convicted of infanticide, racketeering and more than 200 counts of
violating Pennsylvania's abortion laws by performing third-term
abortions or failing to counsel women 24 hours in advance.
Prosecution
experts said one of the babies was nearly 30 weeks along when the
abortion took place, and was so big that Gosnell allegedly joked the
baby could "walk to the bus." A second baby was said to be alive for
about 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped the neck. A third was
born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic employee severed
the spinal cord, according to testimony.
A fourth baby let out a
whimper before Gosnell cut the neck, prosecutors alleged. Gosnell was
acquitted in that baby's death, the only one of the four in which no one
testified to seeing the baby killed.
Gosnell's attorney argued that none of the fetuses was born alive and that any movements were posthumous twitching or spasms.
The
defense also contended that the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya
Mongar of Woodbridge, Va., a Bhutanese immigrant who had been given
repeated doses of Demerol and other powerful drugs to sedate her and
induce labor, was caused by unforeseen complications and did not amount
to murder, as prosecutors charged.
Bernard Smalley, a lawyer for
the woman's family, said he now hopes to bring "some sense of justice
and quiet to this family that's been through so much."
Complete coverage of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial on Crimesider
