Early Life And Psychological Issues In Jared Loughner's Case

January 8, 2011, who knew that Jared Lee Loughner would fire a gun killing 6 victims and injuring 13 including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona. Many people may know him as the mugshot grin guy, but others see him as mentally unstable. There are many questions that come to mind when thinking of this tragedy such as how the role of politics play apart in this incident, what was his mental condition at the time of the crime, and how would treating his mental illness play in his defense. By exploring Jared Loughner’s early life and psychological issues, one can gain a better understanding on the case and the guilty verdict.

The signs of some psychological issues may have developed early in Jared as observed by many of his

Similarly like Hinckley, Loughner was found incompetent and unable to stand trial in May 2011 and in four month he will be reevaluated. Both the defense and prosecution's psychologist and psychiatrist diagnosed Jared Loughner with schizophrenia. According to the Dusky v. United States case, this trial gave rights to have a competency evaluation before proceeding with a trial. Since Jared was found incompetent and his charges for killing and the attempt to assassinate a congresswoman were serious, the next steps would be to give him treatment and have him place at a psychiatric center to become competent, and that is exactly what the judge ordered. Loughner's defense team however, did not want him to receive treatment because he had the right not to receive treatment in which the defense team feared they were going to give Jared the death penalty (Lacey, 2013). Consequently, the longer Jared remain incompetent to understand what is happening in the court, the longer the defense team has to come up with reasons to protect their client from not receiving the death penalty. In the Sell v. Unites States trial, the Supreme Court said that it was okay to involuntary medicate someone for the purpose of gaining competence. There has been many research to find that those who are found incompetent tend to have long

(2014), Arizona do not have the a not guilty by reason of insanity plea, but instead utilizes a guilty except insane plea. After the Hinckley case, Arizona laws have buckled down about using the insanity plea. Therefore, Jared's defense attorney tried looking at different options including “proving by clear and convincing evidence, which is an extremely high burden ... that the defendant did not understand the wrongfulness of his conduct"(Johnson, 2011, para. 5). There is no concluding evidence as to why the defense team did not use the “guilty except insane” please in this case, but there are speculations about how the odds would not be in Jared Loughner’s favor especially considering the almost similar incident of John Hinckley. Less than one percent of people actually use the not guilty by reason of insanity plea, so in this case there weren’t any benefits of using the guilty by insane