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Jared Lee Loughner and 6 other mass shooters: How the cases were resolved

Jared Lee Loughner was found competent Tuesday to stand trial and pled guilty to 19 counts, including murder, for the January 2011 shooting in Tucson in which six people were killed and 13 wounded – including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) of Arizona. In mass shootings like this where the perpetrator was not killed during the rampage, here’s how the cases have been resolved.

3. Beltway sniper attacks

Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star/AP/File
Sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo (c) is led into Spotsylvania Circuit Court by Lt. Donnie Williams (l) and Deputy Melissa Breeden on Oct. 26, 2004, In Spotsylvania, Va. Malvo struck a deal in which he avoided the death penalty and was sentenced instead to life without parole for a second of the 10 sniper slayings that terrorized the Washington area in October 2002.

  • By Amanda Paulson Staff writer

In October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo terrorized the Washington beltway area with a series of sniper shootings that killed 10 people and wounded three more. They were also connected to at least 12 other shootings in the months leading up to the sniper attacks, some of them fatal.

Muhammad was tried and convicted in both Virginia and Maryland, was sentenced to the death penalty in Virginia, and was executed in 2009.

Malvo, who was 17 at the time, faced trial in Virginia and was found guilty for some of the murders, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to two more charges of murder and attempted murder in an effort to avoid the death penalty.

Once the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that juveniles were not subject to the death penalty, that issue became moot, but Malvo later also pleaded guilty to six more murders in Maryland. He was sentenced to six consecutive life sentences without parole.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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