Paul Jennings Hill

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Paul Hill

Rev. Paul Jennings Hill (April 30th, 1943 – September 3, 2003), was an excommunicated Presbyterian minister^[1] and anti-abortion activist connected to the Army of God, who was convicted of the murders of Dr. John Britton and his clinic escort James Barrett outside a Pensacola, Florida abortion clinic on July 29, 1994. In addition to the two murders, Hill seriously wounded June Barrett, the wife of James Barrett. Sentenced to the death penalty under Florida law, Hill died by lethal injection, making him the first person to be executed in the U.S. for killing a physician who provided abortions.

Hill's actions in 1994 were part of an upsurge of violence against abortion providers in the United States in the 1990s, which was disowned by mainstream pro-life activists. 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." During his trial, the judge did not allow Hill to explain his justification for the murders to the jury. Hill said he viewed them as defensive, rather than retributive, acts. Hill left behind a manuscript manifesto ^[2] which his backers promised him they would have published. It has been available online on his official site since 2004.

At the time of Hill's death, Michael F. Griffin was serving a life sentence for the murder of a doctor, David Gunn, in Pensacola, Florida 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 at a clinic in 1994 in Massachusetts.