TUCSON, Ariz. — Jared Loughner was sentenced to seven terms of life in prison Thursday at a court hearing punctuated by raw emotion as victims of his shooting rampage — including former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, accompanied by her husband, Mark Kelly — confronted him. Giffords was shot in the head at close range during last year’s Tucson rampage which left six people dead and 12 others wounded.
As a packed courtroom fell silent, Kelly, with Giffords at his side, told Loughner, 24, that he had failed in his effort to create a world as dark as the one he inhabited.
“You may have put a bullet through her head, but you haven’t put a dent on her spirit and her commitment to make the world a better place,” Kelly said about Giffords, who was gravely wounded and whose arm was in a sling Thursday.
Giffords, who resigned from Congress last January, has difficulty speaking as a result of her injury. She “struggles to walk, her right arm is paralyzed, she’s partially blind,” Kelly said.
Giffords’ court appearance was the first time that she has come face to face with Loughner since he opened fire in January 2011.
Giffords did not speak at the hearing, at which victims described the impact of Loughner’s shooting rampage, but looked directly at Loughner as her husband read from a statement.
“After today, after this moment, Gabby and I are done thinking about you,” Kelly concluded.
With that, he and Giffords walked away.
Loughner was sentenced to seven consecutive terms of life in prison, nearly three months to the day after pleading guilty to 19 criminal counts in federal court, including murder and the attempted assassination of Giffords, the target of the attack.
Loughner waived his right to address the court, and when asked by Larry Burns, the U.S. court judge overseeing the case to confirm that decision orally, he responded, “That’s true,” as he slurred his words — a hallmark of his speech patterns during recent court appearances.
On Thursday, Kelly also called on politicians across America to tackle the issue of gun violence — the first time he or Giffords had spoken so forcefully on the issue.
“We are a people who can watch a young man like you spiral into murderous rampage without choosing to intervene before it is too late,” he said. “We have a political class that is too afraid to do something as simple as have a meaningful debate about our gun laws and how they are being enforced. We have representatives who look at gun violence not as a problem to solve, but as the white elephant in the room to ignore.”
Also Thursday, Kelly was sharply critical of Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, saying she was among the “feckless” political leaders who have failed to take on gun control. He cited Brewer’s remark after the attack that the shooting did not “have anything to do with the size of the magazine or the caliber of the gun.”
In January 2010, Brewer signed a bill that repealed an Arizona law requiring gun owners to have permits to carry concealed guns. Under Arizona law, gun owners can carry their firearms almost anywhere in Arizona, including inside the state Capitol and other government buildings.
One after another Thursday morning, Loughner’s victims took to the dais, at times addressing Burns but usually speaking to Loughner, whom they turned to their right to look at.
U.S. Rep. Ron Barber, an aide to Giffords’ at the time of the shooting and who was struck by a bullet in his leg, told Loughner: “There’s no way to make sense of those senseless acts.” He said he would never forget seeing one of his colleagues, Gabe Zimmerman, 30, die by his side.
“Now you must pay the price,” Barber said. “You must pay the price for the terror you caused.”
Turning to Loughner’s parents, he said, “Please know that I and my family hold no animosity toward you.” While Loughner stoically watched the parade of victims, his mother, Amy Loughner, sniffled loudly and convulsed as people described the horror unleashed by her son. Randy Loughner, Jared Loughner’s father, was also in the courtroom.
Pamela Simon, another Giffords aide who was also injured, taught at the middle school that Loughner attended. She said she remembered him as “a kid who loved music.”
On Thursday, she told him, “You remind us that too often we either do not notice the signs of mental illness, or we just choose to look away.”
Mavy Stoddard, who was shot three times, told Loughner that she cradled her wounded husband, Dorwan, in her arms and whispered, “Breathe deeply, honey.”
Ten minutes later, he was dead.
“I wished the mentalhealth people could have known that you needed help,” Stoddard said, “but that gave you no right to take what we had.”
Loughner sat staring at each one of them, his head tilted to the left, his body barely moving.
Loughner, who has been held at a federal hospital in Missouri for more than a year undergoing psychiatric examinations, has been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia but was deemed competent in August to agree to the plea deal, under which he is not eligible for parole or to appeal his sentence.
On Jan. 8, 2011, Loughner arrived at a public event being hosted by Giffords, then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, at a Tucson shopping center. He was armed with a loaded Glock 9mm pistol and was carrying 60 rounds of extra ammunition.
In less than 30 seconds, he fired 31 shots. He stopped shooting only when he paused to reload. He was eventually tackled and restrained by onlookers. He has never explained what compelled him to open fire.
The dead included John Roll, 63, a federal judge, and 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green.
On Thursday, Suzie Heilman, who had taken Christina to the event with Giffords as a way for Christina to learn about democracy, told Loughner in a voice trembling with anger, “You turned a civics lesson into a nightmare.”
Loughner, a community college student, had originally pleaded innocent to 49 charges connected to the shooting rampage. He reportedly had for years exhibited signs of mental illness, including yelling out in high school classes and complaining about voices in his head.
At a court hearing in May 2011, he interrupted the proceedings with an incoherent outburst and was removed from the courtroom. It was at that hearing that Burns ruled that Loughner was incompetent to stand trial.
Loughner was initially being medicated by force, under orders of the Bureau of Prisons, but has been voluntarily taking medication since this summer.
Dr. Christina Pietz, a psychologist who has been treating Loughner, said that over time he had become cognizant of his actions.
Pietz testified at the August hearing that Loughner’s feelings had evolved from regret for failing to kill Giffords, against whom he had harbored a grudge for several years, to contrition for wounding her and others, and for taking people’s lives.
“I especially cried for the child” and “yelled a lot because it hurt so bad,” Loughner once told Pietz, she testified, reading from notes she had kept of their encounters.
Information for this article was contributed by Fernanda Santos and Timothy Williams of The New York Times; and by James Ball of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/09/2012