Tucson shooter of US lawmaker pleads guilty

TUCSON, Arizona, United States – Disturbed gunman Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty Tuesday, August 7 (Wednesday, August 8 in Manila) to carrying out a deadly Arizona mass shooting in January 2011 that was a failed attempt to assassinate US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Six people were killed and 13 injured, including the congresswoman.

By pleading guilty, the 23-year-old will avoid the death penalty but will still face a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the prosecution explained during the hearing at a federal court in Tucson.

Loughner also waived all right to appeal.

Dressed in a tan prison jumpsuit, his hair cut short, the defendant appeared calm and showed little emotion as he answered the judge’s questions.

Asked if it was true he had approached Giffords intending to kill her, Loughner said: “Yes, it is.”

Loughner’s lawyer, Judy Clark, said her client had agreed to plead guilty “knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently.”

A few minutes earlier, Federal Judge Larry Burns had declared the defendant mentally competent to understand and admit to the charges against him.

Loughner has been receiving psychiatric treatment for more than a year for schizophrenia on the court’s orders. He had previously pleaded not guilty, but Judge Burns decided at the time he was not competent to stand trial.

Government psychologist Christina Peitz testified on Tuesday that Loughner is psychotic but not deluded, and said he had expressed disappointment that he was a “failure” for not having killed Giffords and others.

Pietz said his condition had improved markedly since he was ordered into treatment last year, and added that his mental state would not prevent him from participating in his own defense.

Loughner opened fire on January 8, 2011, outside a Tucson supermarket where Giffords, a Democrat, was meeting with constituents.

Among the six dead were a federal judge, a nine-year-old girl and a member of the congresswoman’s staff.

Suzi Hileman, 59, who was wounded in the shooting, had brought the nine-year-old girl, her neighbor Christina Taylor Green, to the event.

“I’m glad he’s aware of what he’s done,” she told reporters at the court, referring to Loughner. “But it changes nothing.”

She said more should have been done to prevent Loughner from getting his hands on the weapons he used.

“This just should never have happened,” she said.

In January, 41-year-old Giffords — who had been seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party — resigned from congress to focus on her remarkable but continuing recovery. – David Anderson, Agence France-Presse