Online video clips posted by Jared Lee Loughner suggest the suspect in the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left six people dead and 13 wounded may have “mental issues,” prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors in Arizona have asked the judge in charge of the case for permission to move Loughner to a medical prison facility where he can be examined to see if he’s competent to stand trial.
Loughner’s MySpace and YouTube postings include a seven-minute video clip of a hooded and masked person, believed to be the suspect, wearing garbage bags on his lower body and burning an American flag, prosecutors said in Monday’s federal court filing.
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The MySpace account was taken down after the shooting while the YouTube postings are still online, according to the filing.
“The defendant’s postings, all of which were made within the last five months, provide ‘reasonable cause’ that defendant ‘may’ have mental issues for this court to order a psychiatric or psychological examination of the defendant” to determine his competency, the prosecutors said.
U.S. District Judge Larry Burns said Tuesday he will discuss the request at a hearing Wednesday in Tucson.
Loughner, 22, was charged March 4 in a superseding 49-count grand jury indictment with the murder of U.S. District Judge John M. Roll and Gabriel M. Zimmerman, an aide to U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, as well as the slayings of four other Arizona residents who attended Giffords’s community meeting outside a Tucson supermarket.
He pleaded not guilty to charges in an earlier indictment that he tried to assassinate Giffords and kill two of her other aides.
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