Dr. John Bayard Britton

Case background and investigation

Dr. John Bayard Britton, a 69-year-old physician, was shot and killed on the morning of July 29, 1994, as he arrived at the Ladies Center, a clinic in Pensacola, Florida, where he performed abortions. James Herman Barrett, 74, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who was escorting the doctor as a volunteer, was also killed. Barrett's wife, June Barrett, 68, was wounded.

According to Wikipedia's account of the case, the gunman approached as they arrived at the clinic, fired at close range with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, then laid the weapon on the ground and waited to be arrested. Britton, who was born in Boston in 1925, had begun working at Pensacola clinics after another physician, Dr. David Gunn, was shot to death outside a different Pensacola clinic in 1993 in an unrelated attack by a different man.

Paul Jennings Hill, then 40, was arrested at the scene. Hill had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister and was excommunicated in 1993 after television appearances in which he advocated what he called defensive action against abortion providers, according to Wikipedia. In Florida state court he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted first-degree murder, and one count of shooting into an occupied vehicle. He chose to represent himself and pleaded not guilty. The trial judge refused to let him present a justification defense, in which he would have argued that the killings were necessary to prevent abortions.

A jury found Hill guilty on all counts in 1994, and on December 6, 1994, he was sentenced to death. Florida appellate courts, including the Florida Supreme Court in 1996, upheld the convictions and sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 1997. After those automatic appeals ended, Hill gave up his remaining appeals. In a statement before his execution he said he felt no remorse.

Hill was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on September 3, 2003, at age 49. The Death Penalty Information Center's list of executions for that year records his execution in Florida on that date for the deaths of two victims. According to Wikipedia's article on Dr. Britton, Hill was the first person in the United States to be executed for murdering a doctor who performed abortions.

Hill spent almost nine years on death row. Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed the execution warrant in July 2003. The case is closed, with no outstanding charges or unresolved questions about who was responsible; it is included here as a record of the deaths of Dr. Britton and Mr. Barrett and the wounding of Mrs. Barrett.