Excerpt
Jared L. Loughner, his head shaved bare and his hands and feet in restraints, was led Monday into a federal courtroom, where he agreed not to contest his continued imprisonment but offered no hint of how he would respond to the murder and attempted murder charges linking him to the Tucson shootings that left six dead and 14 injured.
Yes, I am Jared Lee Loughner,” he told Magistrate Judge Lawrence O. Anderson, staring blankly ahead with his lawyer, Judy Clarke, a veteran public defender, at his side. The defendant, a 22-year-old college dropout, was wide-eyed and had a wound to his right temple. At the defense table, his eyes darted back and forth and his mouth curled up at one point into a quick smile.
Ms. Clarke signaled that she intended to push for the case to be handled by an out-of-state judge, since one of the victims her client is accused of killing was Judge John M. Roll of Federal District Court in Tucson. Already, all the federal judges in Tucson have recused themselves. As some of Judge Roll’s friends and colleagues looked on, Ms. Clarke said she had “great concern” about any Arizona judges or prosecutors handling the case.
Mr. Loughner (pronounced LOF-ner) faces two federal murder charges and three attempted murder charges in an attack that prosecutors described as an attempt to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, who was struck in the head by a single bullet but survived.
A fine example of judicial responsibility, Texas judges recusing themselves.
"Red Flags at a College, but Tied Hands" by BENEDICT CAREY, New York Times 1/10/2011
Excerpt
He was coming undone, that much is clear.
Sometimes surly, sometimes seemingly unhinged, he was unpredictable in a way that made fellow students in a community college class want to leave the room.
He had changed since high school: the shy, seemingly normal boy had experimented with drugs and, increasingly, with conspiracy theories that made sense to no one but himself.
“This guy wasn’t a missed case,” Randy Borum, an expert on threat assessment at the University of South Florida, said about Jared L. Loughner, the 22-year-old college dropout who is accused of trying to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona on Saturday.
“It wasn’t a case of ‘Gee, no one saw this coming,’ ” Dr. Borum said. “People saw it. But the question then was what do you do about it? Who do you call? The whole thing speaks to the need for some coordinated way to detect such threats.”
Even after the 2007 massacre by a student at Virginia Tech, institutions and employers are seldom set up to handle such potential threats, experts say — even when the warning signs are blatant and numerous.
These institutions typically have no single person or center that tracks the sorts of complaints that teachers and fellow students were making about Mr. Loughner. Nor do they have the legal authority to force people into treatment against their will.
Tracking of complainants about potentially dangerous behavior by students SHOULD be part of school security protocol, at least at the school district level with the information passed to state officials.
My suggestion to school districts; have a special phone number students could call if they feel threatened by another student or teacher, OR the witness dangerous behavior by anyone at school. The call should be logged with details, then investigated when several separate incidents about the same perpetrator are reported. Participation could be enhanced by offering anonymity to the caller.
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