I had expected, from earlier news releases, that Loughner was never going to appear in court, that he was going to be permanently too mentally ill to go to trail. It is still possible I suppose that his defense might be that he was not competent at the time of the shootings, but isn't mentally ill / mentally impaired now. This article describes Loughner as suffering from a bi-polar disorder; previously at least some descriptions described him as schizophrenic. He had been forcibly medicated under court order.
I wonder if he will describe any political opinions as part of his explanation for attacking innocent people, consistent with the writings found among his things after the shooting.
How does someone deal with accepting responsibility for killing so many innocent, complete strangers? What medication can help a person cope with that horror?
From MSNBC.com :
Report: Jared Lee Loughner to plead guilty in Gabrielle Giffords attack
Jared Lee Loughner is expected to plead guilty next week in the deadly shooting that left former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday, citing unidentified sources.
The rampage in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, 2011, left six people dead and 13 wounded, including Giffords, who is still recovering from a head injury.
The Times said that mental health officials had determined that Loughner, 23, is competent to stand trial and that psychiatric experts will testify Tuesday at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Tucson that "he comprehends what happened and acknowledges the gravity of the charges, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was still unfolding."
The Times said the terms of the plea remain unclear.
Loughner, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was forcibly medicated at a Missouri prison facility in an effort to make him mentally ready for trial.
The attack in Tucson came as Giffords was sponsoring an event to meet constituents outside a store. Among the victims who were slain were federal Judge John Roll; 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on Sept. 11, 2001, and Giffords staffer Gabe Zimmerman.
I wonder if he will describe any political opinions as part of his explanation for attacking innocent people, consistent with the writings found among his things after the shooting.
How does someone deal with accepting responsibility for killing so many innocent, complete strangers? What medication can help a person cope with that horror?
From MSNBC.com :
Report: Jared Lee Loughner to plead guilty in Gabrielle Giffords attack
Jared Lee Loughner is expected to plead guilty next week in the deadly shooting that left former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday, citing unidentified sources.
The rampage in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, 2011, left six people dead and 13 wounded, including Giffords, who is still recovering from a head injury.
The Times said that mental health officials had determined that Loughner, 23, is competent to stand trial and that psychiatric experts will testify Tuesday at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Tucson that "he comprehends what happened and acknowledges the gravity of the charges, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was still unfolding."
The Times said the terms of the plea remain unclear.
Loughner, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was forcibly medicated at a Missouri prison facility in an effort to make him mentally ready for trial.
The attack in Tucson came as Giffords was sponsoring an event to meet constituents outside a store. Among the victims who were slain were federal Judge John Roll; 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, who was born on Sept. 11, 2001, and Giffords staffer Gabe Zimmerman.
Giffords spent more than a year in Houston undergoing intensive physical and speech therapy in a recovery that doctors and family have called miraculous. But she was unable to fully return to Congress and resigned in January this year.
Ron Barber, a Giffords staffer who survived two gunshot wounds in the Tucson attack, won her seat in a special election in June.
Dog- A report that I heard on local radio said he will most likely be pleading guilty in order to avoid the death penalty.
ReplyDeleteJOB - THAT makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Laci could tell us that is the reason for a lot of plea deals. Let us hope it will be a mercy to his surviving victims by sparing them reliving the event during the course of a trial as well.
But without a trial, there is so much information that is in question for people who want to understand the tragedy better as part of healing from that horrible violence. While the rest of us didn't suffer directly from the experience the way people who were actually there did, it was still a kind of trauma in part because it was so senseless, so lacking in any kind of legitimate motive.
Most intentional violence seems unjustified to the rest of us, all the murders, murder / suicides, etc. We disgree with it, we condemn it as wrong, but on some level we at least understand the impulse however wrong acting on it was. The randomness of shooting people someone doesn't know, complete strangers - like this incident, like Aurora, is harder to wrap our heads around.
I hope there is some explanation, even if it is just more information about his illness. It is considered inhumane to apply the death penalty to people who are mentally ill or significantly mentally incapacitated because they don't have the same capacity to control their actions or make decisions as other people do - and fairly so. I suspect that plays a role in this plea as well.
Dog- I would agree. The most important thing is for survivors and the grieving loved ones to receive some sort of closure. I don't know where this would fall on the ethics scale, but how wrong would it be that his brain is donated to science as a condition to his plea? Maybe then, further study can be done to see how these mental diseases operate, and how they can be fixed.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading that Loughner, or rather this attorney on his behalf, is negotiating for life in prison. I've also been reading that his mental capacity varies from one period to the next, that there are times when he is still profoundly incapacitated including his level of mental functioning.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like someone who should be in a high security mental hospitl, not a prison population. He should continue to receive treatment, under court orders/forced, if necessary, so that he is not a danger to himself or others - patients, prisoners, OR staff.
I don't see why he couldn't be required as part of that treatment to undergo procedures such as CT Scans or MRIs or other forms of neurological testing or scans, to assist in determining what is going on with his brain. It would be helpful to whomever is tasked with treating him as much as any larger contribution to understanding and treating mental illness that produces violent actions like his.
I don't know how much that would or would not help the survivors, or the loved ones of the victims, to get past those events.
Clearly, survivors like Patricia Maisch would prefer to see us engage in more prevention through intelligent gun regulation. Managing the how rather than the why makes a lot more sense, and it has worked in other similarly developed countries. Our gun culture is a failure.