TUCSON — Jared L. Loughner pleaded guilty
on Tuesday to killing six people and wounding 13 others last year during a
meet-and-greet event here held by Gabrielle Giffords, then a member of the
House of Representatives and the primary target of his rampage. The plea brought
a sudden resolution to a case that seemed threatened by the fragility of Mr.
Loughner’s mental state.
Mr. Loughner, 23, delivered his admission
in a slurred monotone — “I plead guilty” — looking straight ahead from his seat
at the defendant’s table, his back arched and his hands clasped in his lap. He
repeated the words 19 times, one for each of the counts to which he had agreed
to plead guilty as part of a deal that will keep him in prison for the rest of
his life.
He seemed subdued and resigned, telling
Judge Larry A. Burns, who has presided over the case in Federal District Court,
that he understood the consequences of his actions, as well as the implications
of his plea, which offers him no chance of appeals.
At the hearing, Dr. Christina Pietz, a psychologist
who treated Mr. Loughner at a federal hospital in Springfield, Mo., said his
feelings had evolved — from regret for failing to kill Ms. Giffords, whom he
had harbored a secret grudge against for several years, to remorse for wounding
her and others and for taking people’s lives.
“I especially cried for the child” and “yelled a lot because it hurt
so bad,” Mr. Loughner once told Dr. Pietz, she testified, reading from notes
she had kept of their encounters.
His plea brought a measure of victory to
prosecutors, who were able to take Mr. Loughner off the streets without having
to face the uncertain outcome of a trial, where they risked the possibility
that his lawyers might sway a jury with an insanity defense.
“We feel that this is a certain and just and appropriate resolution
in this case,” John Leonardo, the United States attorney for Arizona, said
outside the courthouse.
Among the survivors, as well as relatives
and friends of those whom Mr. Loughner killed, there were mixed emotions.
“I truly believe that justice was done today,” said Ron Barber, a
senior aide to Ms. Giffords who was wounded in the shooting and who won a
special election in June to fill the remainder of her term after she retired.
To Suzi Hileman, though, whom Mr. Loughner shot
multiple times, the plea brought her no closer to healing.
“This is too little, too late,” said Ms. Hileman, who had taken the
youngest of the shooting’s victims, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, to Ms.
Giffords’s event. “Six people are dead, and my congresswoman had a bullet
through her head. This is with me forever.”
Mr. Loughner arrived here on Monday from
the hospital in Missouri, where he had been held for more than a year, and
spent the night at a medium-security prison before Tuesday’s hearing. He looked
pale and skinny under a khaki jumpsuit, and he offered short answers to the
questions Judge Burns asked.
The judge said, “Has anyone put unfair
pressure on you” to plead guilty?
“No,” Mr. Loughner answered.
His mother, Amy Joanne Loughner, wept
quietly from a corner of the courtroom.
Mr. Loughner began exhibiting odd behavior
long before the shooting. Classmates at Pima Community College, where he
attended, described him as strange and eccentric; professors spoke of his
“disorganized thought process,” Dr. Pietz said.
Once, he asked his parents if they could
hear the same voices he had been hearing, she testified. In written answers to
her questions, his parents said they were worried he would kill himself. In
videos he made, Mr. Loughner said that he felt depressed, and that he had the
urge to kill someone.
On Jan. 8, 2011, he fired 31 shots from a
9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, until he was tackled by onlookers as he
tried to reload. It took him 16 seconds to carry out the shooting. He
originally faced 49 criminal charges, but most of them were dropped as part of
the plea agreement.
The volatility of Mr. Loughner’s mental
state was a deciding factor. On May 25, 2011, he delivered an incoherent rant
in court, at the same hearing at which Judge Burns ruled him incompetent to
stand trial. Four months later, he sat expressionless through a seven-hour
hearing.
Judge Burns noticed the changes in him on
Tuesday. “He’s a different person,” the judge said in court. Moments later, he
added, “There’s no question in my mind he understands what’s going on today,”
deeming Mr. Loughner competent to enter his guilty plea.
Mr. Loughner has had a job in prison,
delivering towels to inmates and stamping envelopes — “a big deal to him,” Dr.
Pietz said, “something that he’s successful at.”
He has been voluntarily taking medication
since July; for months before that, he was medicated by force, under orders of
the Bureau of Prisons, Judge Burns said.
Dr. Pietz said Mr. Loughner told her he
wished he had taken the antidepressants he had once been prescribed, long
before the shooting, his arrest and the diagnosis of schizophrenia that
followed it.
Ms. Giffords did not attend the hearing.
Her husband, Mark E. Kelly, said they had been in contact with the United
States attorney’s office, informed of every step in the negotiations.
“The pain and loss” caused by the shooting “are incalculable,” Mr.
Kelly said. “Avoiding trial will allow us, and we hope the whole Southern
Arizona community, to continue with our recovery and move forward with our
lives.”
Mr. Loughner’s formal sentencing is
scheduled for Nov. 15.
Marisa Gerber contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect
the following correction:
Correction: August 7, 2012
An earlier home page summary on this
article gave an incorrect account of the casualties. Six people were killed and
13 were injured, including Gabrielle Giffords. She was not killed.
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