Jared Lee Loughner

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  At 2:05 on the morning of the 8th of January 2011, Jared Lee Loughner left a voicemail for a friend. "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later." The message was short and casual. Within hours, a shooting in the Tucson area, Arizona, had killed six people, and Loughner was the man responsible. He was born in 1988, and almost everyone who knew him described a person who had changed. What happened to him in the years before that morning? Did anyone see it coming, and what did they do about it? And how does a court try a defendant who may not understand the charges against him?

  11210070

• 2. A Personality Unravels

  ›

  Jared Lee Loughner was born on the 10th of September 1988, the only child of Randy and Amy Loughner. A neighbor called them a very private family. Amy worked as a horticulturalist for the Pima County Parks Department, and Randy was a retired truck driver. In high school Jared had friends. In the years after, neighbors noticed that he kept to himself and rarely spoke to anyone.

  Mountain View High School in Tucson is where his schooling ended, because he dropped out in 2006. Around that time, when he was about eighteen, people who knew him saw his personality shift. Kelsey Hawkes, who dated him for several months in high school, was shocked when she heard of his arrest. "I've always known him as the sweet, caring Jared," said Hawkes, who was 21 and a University of Arizona student by then.

  A Quiznos restaurant eventually fired him, and his manager said he had undergone a personality transformation. He then volunteered at a local animal shelter, walking dogs, but he was asked not to return. The shelter manager later explained, "He was walking dogs in an area we didn't want dogs walked...he didn't understand or comprehend what the supervisor was trying to tell him. He was just resistant to that information."

  Zach Osler, a high-school classmate and Loughner's closest friend, traced the unraveling to a breakup with his high-school girlfriend. Afterward Loughner abused alcohol and drugs, including cannabis, cocaine, psychedelic mushrooms, LSD and Salvia divinorum, a hallucinogen that was legal in Arizona. Another former classmate, Caitie Parker, remembered him as a "pot head." By one longtime friend's account, he struggled for more than two years and then quit alcohol, tobacco and recreational drugs in late 2008.

  Police records show two earlier offenses. In 2007 he was cited in Pima County for possession of drug paraphernalia. On the 13th of October 2008 he was charged with defacing a street sign in Marana, near Tucson. He had drawn a stylized CX, which he said were Christian symbols, and the charge was dismissed in March 2009 after he completed a diversion program. The U.S. Army also turned him away in 2008 as "unqualified," and military sources said he admitted to marijuana use on numerous occasions during the application process.

  In the months before the shooting, his parents grew alarmed. They disabled his car every night to keep him home, and his father confiscated his shotgun. Both urged him to seek psychiatric help. Loughner, meanwhile, had become obsessed with controlling what he perceived to be lucid dreams. In February 2010, his name began appearing in the reports of the campus police at Pima Community College.

  213151683

• 3. Pima Community College

  ›

  Between February and September 2010, campus police at Pima Community College had five contacts with Loughner over disruptions in classrooms and the library. Some of his teachers complained to the administration. They took his bizarre behavior as a sign of mental illness and feared what he might do.

  On the 29th of September 2010, college police found a YouTube video that Loughner had made. In it he claimed the college was illegal under the United States Constitution and called his school "one of the biggest scams in America."

  The college suspended him and wrote to his parents, hoping to consult with them and their son together. To return, Loughner would have to resolve his code of conduct violations and obtain a mental health clearance. That meant a mental health professional would have to judge that he was not a danger to himself or others. On the 4th of October, he and his parents met campus administrators, and he said he would withdraw. He never submitted to a mental health evaluation and never came back.

  Classmates were uneasy. One worried that he might commit a school shooting, and one of his teachers later claimed a similar suspicion. Several recalled a class discussion in which a young woman described her abortion and Loughner laughed at her. Former classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, "(Loughner) started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby." Another classmate, Lydian Ali, remembered a poem about an abortion, and said Loughner responded with a remark about strapping a bomb to the fetus.

  Tong Shan, a former classmate and friend, last saw him in October 2010, after the suspension and just before he bought the handgun. She said Loughner was "anti-government" but never seemed violent and never mentioned buying a gun. Her description of him as anti-government was one his own online messages would later bear out.

  520888797

• 4. Beliefs and Grievances

  ›

  Voting records show Loughner was registered as an independent. He voted in 2006 and 2008 but not in 2010. His friend Zach Osler said, "He did not watch TV; he disliked the news; he didn't listen to political radio; he didn't take sides; he wasn't on the Left; he wasn't on the Right." Another friend, Zane Gutierrez, told The New York Times that Loughner's anger would "well up at the sight of President George W. Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government."

  Conspiracy theories had a profound effect on him, according to Osler. Loughner belonged to the message board Above Top Secret, where members did not respond warmly to posts believed to come from his account. He espoused theories about the 9/11 attacks and the New World Order, and he believed in a 2012 apocalypse. After the shooting, the Anti-Defamation League reviewed his messages and found a "disjointed theme" of distrust and dislike of the government. In his writings, the government used language and grammar to brainwash people, created "infinite currency" without gold and silver behind it, and had NASA fake spaceflights. Reporters who study right-wing militia groups and the "Patriot Movement" found his video comments on currency and the Constitution strikingly similar to the paranoid corners of the Internet.

  His resentment of Gabby Giffords ran deeper than politics. A former friend, Bryce Tierney, said Loughner had long expressed dislike for her and often said that women should not hold positions of power. He repeatedly called her a "fake." That feeling grew after he attended her event on the 25th of August 2007 and, in his view, she did not adequately answer his question: "What is government if words have no meaning?" Loughner kept her form letter thanking him for attending. He stored it in the same box as an envelope scrawled with phrases like "die bitch" and "assassination plans have been made."

  Giffords is Jewish, so journalists speculated that Loughner was antisemitic. The Anti-Defamation League's analysis found instead a more generalized dislike of religion, of government and of women in power. Despite rumors at the time, he was not born Jewish. People who knew him described him as an anti-theist, and he declined to state a religion on his Army application. In his "Final Thoughts" video, he answered the national motto "In God We Trust" with "No, I don't trust in God!" He disliked all religions and was especially critical of Christians. A police report also noted that he had once been caught making graffiti associated with anti-abortion groups, a detail that sits awkwardly beside his other views.

  9694919226

• 5. The Morning of January 8th

  ›

  The 9mm Glock pistol Loughner used was allegedly bought from a Sportsman's Warehouse in Tucson on the 30th of November 2010. At 4:12 on the morning of the shooting, he posted on MySpace: "Goodbye friends. Please don't be mad at me. The literacy rate is below 5%. I haven't talked to one person who is literate. I want to make it out alive. The longest war in the history of the United States. Goodbye. I'm saddened with the current currency and job employment. I had a bully at school. Thank you." He closed with a postscript telling readers to plead the fifth. The page showed a close-up photo of a handgun resting on a document titled "United States History."

  At 7:04 a.m. MST, Loughner went to a Walmart near the Foothills Mall to buy ammunition. He left without buying it and completed the purchase at the Walmart on North Cortaro Road at 7:28. At 7:34, Arizona Game and Fish Department officer Alen Edward Forney stopped him for running a red light. The officer found no outstanding warrants, so he let Loughner go with a warning to drive carefully.

  A taxi then took Loughner to a Safeway supermarket in Casas Adobes, where Giffords was holding a meeting with constituents. The shooting began at 10:10 a.m. MST. Loughner opened fire from close range, hitting Giffords and numerous bystanders. Giffords, the target, was shot in the head and critically injured. Thirteen other people were wounded by gunfire, and one more was hurt while fleeing the scene. Bystanders were the ones who stopped him.

  818999576

• 6. Arrest and Charges

  ›

  "I plead the Fifth," Loughner said as police took him into custody. On the 10th of January 2011, the Pima County Sheriff's Office released a photograph taken by its forensic unit, and it appeared on front pages nationwide. The Washington Post described his expression as "smirking and creepy, with hollow eyes ablaze." The art director of The New York Times said the picture ran because it was the picture of the day and "invited you to look and study, and wonder."

  The federal charges were one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of murder of a federal employee, and two counts of attempting to murder a federal employee. The murder counts covered Giffords's aide and Chief U.S. District Court Judge John Roll. The attempted murder counts covered injuries to two other aides. He was indicted on three of the charges on the 19th of January 2011. He was held without bail at the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, kept alone for 23 hours a day, with one hour out of his cell to shower and exercise. On the 24th of February he was moved to the United States Penitentiary in Tucson.

  Judy Clarke, a former federal public defender who had represented suspects in several high-profile murder and terrorism cases, was appointed to defend him. The entire federal judiciary of Arizona recused itself because of ties to their colleague Roll. At the direction of Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Kozinski, the case went to Larry Alan Burns, a judge from the Southern District of California based in San Diego. Federal prosecutors opposed moving the trial out of Arizona despite the pre-trial publicity.

  Arizona state prosecutors announced they intended to file murder and attempted murder charges for victims who were neither members of Congress nor federal employees. They normally have ten days from taking a suspect into custody to file charges, but time in federal custody does not count. Arizona law also bars a verdict of "not guilty by reason of insanity," though it allows "guilty but insane."

  On the 24th of January 2011, Loughner appeared before Burns at the Sandra Day O'Connor U.S. Courthouse in Phoenix. His hair had partially regrown, and he smiled as the charges were presented. Clarke asked the judge to enter a plea for him, and a plea of not guilty was recorded. When Burns asked whether her client understood the charges, she said they were "not raising that issue" at the time. On the 3rd of March 2011 a federal grand jury returned additional charges, for a total of 49 counts. On the 9th of March, Loughner pleaded not guilty to all of them. The question of understanding that Clarke set aside would define the next year and a half.

  9377788598

• 7. Competency and Medication

  ›

  On the 25th of May 2011, Judge Burns ruled Loughner incompetent to stand trial, relying on two medical evaluations. He had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and the proceedings were suspended while he received psychiatric treatment at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. The same day, Burns addressed letters in which Loughner declared a conflict with his counsel. "I intend to table them at this time," he said, adding that if Loughner's competency was restored, he could renew the matter then. The judge suppressed the letters from the court record.

  On the 26th of June 2011, Burns ruled that prison doctors could forcibly give Loughner antipsychotic drugs to restore him to competency. On the 12th of July, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed that. Because Loughner "has not been convicted of a crime, is presumptively innocent and is therefore entitled to greater constitutional protections than a convicted inmate," he could refuse the drugs. The panel added that prison authorities could still take other safety measures, including forced administration of tranquilizers.

  A week later, prison medical staff resumed forcible treatment with the antipsychotic risperidone. This time they cited Washington v. Harper and said the aim was to control the danger Loughner posed to himself and others, not to make him fit for trial. His lawyers filed an emergency motion arguing the ruling had been violated. The Ninth Circuit denied the injunction, so treatment continued, and arguments on its lawfulness began on the 30th of August. A federal appeals court denied a request to halt the medication in March 2012, and a request to rehear arguments was denied on the 5th of June 2012.

  A hearing on the 28th of September 2011, delayed from the 21st, was meant to test whether Loughner could understand the charges and help in his own defense. His lawyers objected to his attending, without success. He disrupted the hearing with an outburst and was carried from the courtroom. According to The New York Times, Loughner believed he had succeeded in killing Giffords, and he clashed with his lawyer when she told him the congresswoman had survived. The judge found him still incompetent.

  On the 24th of May 2012, a federal judge ordered a new competency hearing for the 27th of June. It was later pushed back to the 7th of August, while Loughner remained at the federal prison hospital in Missouri.

  3940424551

• 8. Plea and Sentence

  ›

  Christina Pietz, Loughner's forensic psychologist, testified first at the hearing. She said he had shown depressive symptoms in 2006 and was formally diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2011. After more than a year of forced medication, she believed, he had expressed remorse and was a changed individual. Burns found him competent, and Loughner pleaded guilty to 19 counts, which spared him the death penalty.

  The plea bargain assured that prosecutors would not seek death, so the law left a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Giffords and her husband, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, approved the deal. So did U.S. Representative Ron Barber, a former Giffords aide who was shot in the attack, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and John S. Leonardo, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona. The offer was made and accepted after consultation with the families of the other victims.

  By pleading guilty, Loughner waived any further appeals and gave up the chance to switch to an insanity plea. He must pay restitution of $19 million, which is $1 million for each of the victims. He forfeited the weapons he used and any money earned from selling his story. He told the court he understood each charge, initialed every page of the agreement and signed his name to it, dated the 6th of August.

  On the 8th of November 2012, Loughner stood before Burns again, this time in a Tucson courtroom. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms plus 140 years in prison without parole. A state trial was still legally possible. That afternoon Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall announced she would not prosecute him for Arizona. After speaking personally with each surviving victim and the families of those killed, she concluded a state trial would not benefit them. They told her they were "completely satisfied with the federal prosecution," that "justice has been served," and that the federal sentence was "suitably severe."

  Loughner is serving his sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota, a prison for inmates with specialized health issues.

  5560616557