Robert Lewis Dear, who is accused of killing three people and wounding nine during the shooting spree at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic on Nov. 27, shouted ”I’m a warrior for the babies” as he appeared in court. ”I am guilty,” he said. “There will be no trial.”
Dear, 57, his eyes wide and hair disheveled, had 20 outbursts during the hearing. When lawyers were talking about a list of victims of the shooting, he said: “Could you add the babies that were supposed to be aborted that day? Could you add that to the list?”
“You’ll never know what I saw in that clinic,” Dear also said. “The atrocities—the babies.”
When the judge was talking about the possibility of a gag order, Dear blurted: “Seal the truth, huh? Kill the babies, that’s what Planned Parenthood does.” His lawyer, Dan King, asked the judge for a competency hearing for Dear.
Dear did not spare his defender, who defended James Holmes, the shooter who killed 12 people at a Colorado movie theater during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. “Do you know who [King] is?” he shouted. “He’s the lawyer for the Batman shooter who drugged him all up and that’s what they want to do to me.
Dear is accused of 179 felony charges, including eight for first-degree murder and 131 for attempted first-degree murder. The prosecution is not seeking the death penalty yet; that decision is expected within the next two months.