Years ago, I had the privilege of representing a young Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania police officer who shot and killed another young man who had just robbed a convenience store on Philadelphia’s Main Line. The evidence established that the robber had driven away from the crime scene at a high rate of speed and was chased down and surrounded by Lower Merion police on City Avenue, the border between the township and the City of Philadelphia.

The suspect sat in his car ignoring repeated commands to show his hands. He then suddenly exited his vehicle and charged directly at my client while holding a heavy wooden club over his head with both hands.

As shown on fuzzy police dash cam video, my client had less than two seconds to assess the situation and react. As he later testified, he could not tell if the club was an axe, a lead pipe or a shotgun. He ran backwards away from the club-wielding man. But as the distance between them closed, my client – while still running backwards – fired one shot which hit his attacker in the anterior chest.

The assailant fell to the ground and was motionless. The police disarmed him and had him transported to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

My client was white. The decedent was black. Angry demonstrators picketed the suburban police headquarters and claimed that the shooting was a modern day lynching. Racial tensions were high as black leaders demanded that my client be charged with murder.

My client faced possible federal and state criminal charges. Since the shooting had occurred on Philadelphia’s side of City Avenue, the Philadelphia police homicide squad and District Attorney’s Office conducted the local murder investigation. The FBI conducted a parallel civil rights investigation.

After intensive and exhaustive investigations, no criminal charges were brought at either the local or federal level.

Nevertheless, the decedent’s parents filed a federal law suit for money damages based on the theory that my client had violated their son’s civil rights. I tried that case before a jury in U. S. District Court and won a defense verdict in favor of my client.

Now before the case went to trial, based on the overwhelming evidence gathered in discovery which favored my client, I moved for a dismissal of the civil case. The District Court denied the motion, and I appealed to the U.S. Third Circuit of Appeals which granted oral argument.

It was at that argument that I encountered then Circuit Court Judge Samuel Alito who chaired the three judge panel that heard the appeal.

I was aware of Judge Alito’s reputation for being very smart, thorough and well-prepared. But, as I was about to learn, all of that was understatement.

During the oral argument, Alito asked both sides penetrating questions that cut to the heart of the matter and clearly demonstrated his detailed knowledge of the evidence and mastery of the law. As Alito probed and commented from the bench, he emanated an incisive brilliance.

To say that I was impressed would be putting it mildly. He was by far one of the most intelligent people – and certainly the smartest jurist – that I had ever encountered.

But equally impressive was Alito’s humble demeanor and simple courtesy to counsel and everyone else in the courtroom. He was nice which is a trait rarely found among our robed masters.

Because opposing counsel established that there might be a factual dispute that needed to be resolved by a trier of fact, Judge Alito and the panel denied my appeal and allowed the case to proceed to trial. Though I disagreed with the panel’s decision, I could find no fault with Alito’s reasoning or the manner in which he handled the case. I was and remain in awe of his ability, humility and kindly demeanor.

All of this transpired shortly before Alito became an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yesterday, when news broke that a copy of his initial draft majority opinion in an abortion case before the Court had been leaked to and published by Politico, I immediately thought back to my oral argument before him.

Based on my knowledge of him, I expected the draft to be well-reasoned, well-written and persuasive. (You can read the draft by clicking on this link.) It is all of that and more. It meticulously and cogently lays out a compelling basis for overturning the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade which created a Constitutional right to abortion and the later case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey which upheld Roe.

Here’s a taste of Alito’s draftsmanship:

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives. ‘The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.’ [Citation omitted] That is what the Constitution and the rule of law demand.”

Abortion advocates have gone into full meltdown mode. Frenzied and angry protests are underway outside the Supreme Court and around the country.

Of course, Alito’s draft says nothing about outlawing or prohibiting abortions. It only states that the elected representatives of the people should decide the question. What a novel concept.

I am working on an analysis of the draft opinion for The American Spectator. But, in the meantime, I wanted to share with you my experience with Alito as well as an opinion piece that I wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2013. The op-ed dealt with the then ongoing trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist who was later convicted of murdering viable, living infants. In my piece, I discussed the questionable judicial origin of Roe v. Wade and its slippery slope to infanticide.

Here’s the piece.

Nightmare World of Roe v. Wade

– Philadelphia Inquirer May 1, 2013.

What would you do if you found a newborn baby struggling to stay afloat in a toilet?

If you had worked at Philadelphia’s Women’s Medical Society, you would have fished him out, tenderly laid him on a table, and cut his spinal cord with a pair of scissors.

Such is the grisly testimony in the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who has been charged with murdering living infants at his abortion clinic.

Gosnell has elected not to take the stand, apparently relying on his lawyer’s argument that none of the alleged victims were alive when their spinal columns were severed. Although late-term abortions after 24 weeks gestation are illegal in Pennsylvania, the prosecution must prove that the newborns were viable when the scissors were applied.

So it is that the jury has heard expert medical evidence as to the gestational development of this or that corpse. Below 24 weeks, the little people are fair game. But 25 weeks? Now we have a problem.

Welcome to the nightmare world of Roe v. Wade.

From the beginning of the Republic, elected state legislatures had uniformly outlawed abortions at any stage of pregnancy. Then the U.S. Supreme Court discovered a woman’s right to abortion in the unwritten “penumbras” of the Constitution. Waving coat hangers – the symbol of unsafe “back alley” abortions – feminists celebrated this judicial magic act and proclaimed a new, enlightened era in which women could have undeveloped fetuses surgically removed from their bodies.

Predictably, proponents of this enlightened era have claimed that Gosnell’s alleged practices are an aberration and unrepresentative of the abortion industry. But are they?

Alisa Snow, representing Planned Parenthood affiliates in Florida, recently testified before the state House that her organization believes that the decision to kill an infant who survives an abortion should be left to the abortion-seeking mother and the abortionist. Here is a sample of her testimony:

Q: “If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

Snow: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

So, Planned Parenthood, arguably the largest abortion provider in the nation, advocates that a living, breathing, out-of-the-womb baby should be accorded no more consideration than a tiny unformed fetal mass in the mother’s womb. By this logic, Gosnell should be acquitted.

Rick Santorum once gave an impassioned speech in the Senate against late-term abortion and warned of the short slippery slope between it and infanticide. The left mocked and ridiculed him for opposing a danger that would never come about. The Gosnell case and the Planned Parenthood testimony prove otherwise.

We have reached the bottom of that slippery slope, where a viable baby’s right to life must yield to the mother’s right to choose. Medical ethicists may debate the fine points of how we got here, but no one can deny that the intentional killing of a living, innocent infant is pure and unadulterated evil.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor practicing law in Philadelphia.

Okay, that’s it for now. More is on the way.