Feds charge Loughner with murder

WASHINGTON – Prosecutors moved closer to seeking the death penalty for Jared Lee Loughner, charging him for the first time with the murder of a federal judge and a congressional aide in the shooting spree earlier this year that also critically wounded Democratic Rep. Gabrielle D. Giffords.

The 22-year-old Loughner was indicted by a federal grand jury on the new murder allegations, and federal prosecutors in Phoenix said the case now “involves potential death-penalty charges” that could send him to death row for killing six and wounding 13 at Gifford’s Jan. 8 Congress On Your Corner event in Tucson, Ariz.

“This was an attack on Congresswoman Giffords, her constituents and her staff,” said U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke in Phoenix, announcing the new 49-count indictment that his office obtained Thursday and made public Friday. “Lives were extinguished while exercising one of the most precious rights of American citizens, the right to meet freely and openly with their member of Congress.”

Burke said that the Department of Justice “rules require us to pursue a deliberate and thorough process” before the government announces whether it will definitely seek Loughner’s death. He said that process includes consulting with those who were wounded and the families of the dead, and “consideration of all evidence relevant to guilt and punishment.”

Loughner earlier was indicted on a series of assault charges, and pleaded not guilty. U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns, of San Diego, who will be trying the case, has set a hearing for Wednesday on the new indictment.

The new charges state that Loughner, firing a Glock 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, killed U.S. District Judge John M. Roll while he “was engaged in and on account of the performance of his official duties.”

Roll, the chief federal judge in Tucson, had gone to the congressional town hall meeting at a local strip mall apparently to thank Giffords for her help in a request to ease the heavy caseload among federal judges in Arizona. If prosecutors can prove that Roll was killed while performing his official duties, the charge of “murder of a federal employee” could be enough to win a federal murder conviction and possible death sentence.

The other federal employee killed that morning was Gabriel M. Zimmerman, an aide to the congresswoman whom the indictment said was slain “while he was assisting” Giffords. That too could bring a federal death sentence.

Others who died were members of the public who were attending the congressional meet-and-greet.

Giffords is being treated in a hospital in Houston for a gunshot wound to the brain.