State tries to silence Anderson

On the morning of April 3, 2008, Kline issued a follow-up subpoena to Judge Anderson.  The subpoena ordered Anderson to testify at a preliminary hearing in the Planned Parenthood criminal case and to produce certain relevant documents.  These included a series of letters and other papers regarding KDHE reports that had, according to Judge Anderson, been improperly altered or manufactured.

Later that day, Judge Anderson filed with the state Supreme Court informing the court of the subpoena and of the obligation he felt to comply with it. Time stamps on the records in question show that five minutes after Anderson responded, Deputy Attorney General Michael Leitch, acting on behalf of Attorney General Six, filed a request for a "protective order" for the patient files in question. 

 "Now the documents appear to be on the move again, threatening this court's jurisdiction," wrote the deputy AG.  The following day, the high court ordered Anderson “not to appear as commanded” by Kline's subpoena and not to share the relevant records with Kline.  Until the court unsealed these documents a month later, Kline was unaware of these details.

This would not be the only time Kline would be denied critical evidence by the state.  On April 28, District Judge Stephen Tatum told KDHE that it would not have to honor a records request from Kline in his case against Planned Parenthood. 

Abortion industry fights grand juries

Kansas is one of only six states that allows its citizens to petition to form grand juries.  The seeming complicity of Attorney General Morrison and other abortion industry beneficiaries with the clinics suggests why this law can be useful.  In both Wichita and Johnson County, citizen groups took advantage of the law to petition for grand juries to investigate Tiller and Planned Parenthood respectively.

In both venues, the abortion industry and its allies did everything within their power to derail the grand juries.  In February 2008, Kline went to court to insist that the Johnson County grand jury get the redacted records it had subpoenaed. Planned Parenthood resisted fiercely and anxiously, on privacy grounds.

The privacy claim would carry more weight if Planned Parenthood, like Tiller’s clinic, did not solicit patient data for fundraising purposes and had it not been cited in a 2002 inspection by the KDHE for being sloppy in the handling of patient files.   In addition, of course, the court had assured Planned Parenthood at the very beginning of the legal process that patient privacy was not at risk.

Observers were struck by the fact that throughout the hearing District Judge Kevin Moriarty dealt with Planned Parenthood as though it were not the defendant in a deadly serious criminal matter but the aggrieved party in “a feud,” as the Topeka Capital-Journal artlessly described the contest.

Instead of ruling on the validity of the subpoena, Moriarty volunteered to create a spreadsheet--with Planned Parenthood’s help--that would somehow provide the information the grand jury requested.  A frustrated grand jury, selected from a jury pool deeply poisoned by the one-sided media coverage and running out of time, ultimately declined to press charges.

In Wichita meanwhile, a grand jury, authorized by citizen petition, interviewed witnesses and subpoenaed records.  True to form, Dr. Tiller’s lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court to quash the subpoenas, if not shut the grand jury down altogether.  For their part the Sedgwick County grand jury judges and prosecutor turned in persuasive briefs arguing strongly for the right of grand jurors to the records they had requested

Incredibly, Attorney General Six sided with Tiller’s attorneys against the grand jury. This was all part of a pattern for the new AG.  In Johnson County, it was at his request that KDHE had joined forces with Planned Parenthood. and refused to supply Kline with relevant records.

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