By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS Staff Journalist After only 37 minutes of deliberation, a jury found the man who admitted to killing late-term abortion doctor George Tiller to be guilty of first-degree murder. Scott Roeder, 51, who admitted to shooting Tiller to death on May 31, defended his actions by saying he was trying to prevent more unborn children from being killed. During closing arguments on Friday, Roeder’s attorney, Mark Rudy, said his client shot the doctor out of a conviction that he would be preventing "more carnage on the unborn," as reported by The Wall Street Journal. "No defendant can be convicted based on his convictions," Rudy said. During the trial, Roeder admitted that he had been thinking about killing Tiller, who was one of the few late-term abortion practitioners in the country, for more than a decade. He finally acted on these thoughts last spring when he walked into the Reform Lutheran Church in Kansas City where Tiller worshipped and found the doctor handing out bulletins in the lobby. He walked up to him, put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. Tiller died instantly. Roeder fled but was apprehended a short time later. "If I didn't do it the babies were going to die the next day," Roeder told the court on Thursday. The judge in the case, Sedgwick County, Kansas District Judge Warren Wilbert would not allow the jury to consider convicting Roeder of a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, which is defined as "an unreasonable but honest belief that deadly force was justified." Tiller's family called the jury's guilty verdict "just." Although Roeder describes himself as a born-again Christian, prominent Christian leaders have condemned his actions. "[V]iolence in the name of protesting abortion is immoral, unjustified, and horribly harmful to the pro-life cause," Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., a preeminent evangelical, said at the time of the murder. "The horror of abortion cannot be rightly confronted, much less corrected, by means of violence and acts outside the law and lawful means of remedy." Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, agrees. "Violence is antithetical to the pro-life movement which is why Priests for Life is part of the vast chorus of pro-life groups condemning the killing of George Tiller,” he said shortly after the verdict was read. “On the other hand, violence is the practice of the abortion industry, which kills real people in the womb every day. Moreover, advocates have done numerous acts of violence against pro-life people, and I receive death threats several times a month. It would be nice to hear abortion advocacy groups condemn these things once in a while." Roeder plans to appeal the decision. © All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com