Novel New Indictment Hits Loughner with 49 Counts, Including Murder Charge re Chief Judge Roll
A federal grand jury in Arizona has issued a sweeping new superseding indictment against suspect Jared Lee Loughner, who is accused in a January supermarket parking lot shooting rampage in Tucson. It left six dead, including Chief U.S. District Judge John Roll, and more than a dozen injured, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The new indictment includes a murder charge concerning Roll’s death, as expected. But it also applies a novel legal argument under civil rights law in charging Loughner, 22, with crimes not only against federal figures killed and injured at the Safeway meet-and-greet event hosted by Giffords but against those who simply attended. In doing so, prosecutors are treating the supermarket as if it were Congress, for the purpose of protecting constituents meeting with their elected representative, according to Arizona Republic and the Washington Post.
Ex-prosecutors with whom the Post discussed the case said this legal approach is, at best, a stretch that could create appellate issues.
“They clearly have the congresswoman, her staff and a federal judge covered by federal law, and for everyone else they could prosecute him in state court,” says law professor Stephen Salzberg of George Washington University, who was formerly a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division. “You don’t need to stretch it and try to argue that everyone was in a federally protected area. That is a really sweeping view of the federal law.”
Loughner’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Post. If convicted, Loughner could get the death penalty.
Additional and related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Video Shows Chief US District Judge Roll Protecting Giffords Aide as Suspect Fired 32 Bullets”
ABAJournal.com: “Suspect in Shooting of Giffords and Judge Roll Web-Searched Assassins Before Massacre, Officials Say”
CNN: “E-mails show Arizona campus worried about Loughner before shootings”
Tucson Sentinel: “Loughner lawyers complain prison giving psych records to FBI”
