Shooting Suspect Waives Bail and Is Ruled ‘a Danger’

PHOENIX — Jared L. Loughner, his head shaved bare and his hands and feet in restraints, was led Monday into a federal courtroom, where he agreed not to contest his continued imprisonment but offered no hint of how he would respond to the murder and attempted murder charges linking him to the Tucson shootings that left six dead and 14 injured
“Yes, I am Jared Lee Loughner,” he told Magistrate Judge Lawrence O. Anderson, staring blankly ahead with his lawyer, Judy Clarke, a veteran public defender, at his side. The defendant, a 22-year-old college dropout, was wide-eyed and had a wound to his right temple. At the defense table, his eyes darted back and forth and his mouth curled up at one point into a quick smile.

Chris Carlson/Associated Press

Ms. Clarke signaled that she intended to push for the case to be handled by an out-of-state judge, since one of the victims her client is accused of killing was Judge John M. Roll of Federal District Court in Tucson. Already, all the federal judges in Tucson have recused themselves. As some of Judge Roll’s friends and colleagues looked on, Ms. Clarke said she had “great concern” about any Arizona judges or prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Loughner (pronounced LOF-ner) faces two federal murder charges and three attempted murder charges in an attack that prosecutors described as an attempt to assassinate Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, who was struck in the head by a single bullet but survived.

Mr. Loughner, dressed in beige prison garb, a white T-shirt and blue slip-on shoes, agreed not to challenge his continued detention without bail after Wallace H. Kleindienst, a federal prosecutor, labeled him a danger and a flight risk. That prompted the judge to quickly rule, based on the serious charges, that Mr. Loughner was “a danger to the community” and ought to be held without bail.

“Good luck to you, Mr. Loughner,” Judge Anderson said as the defendant, who could face the death penalty if convicted, received a pat on the back from Ms. Clarke and was led away by security officers. Ms. Giffords remained in critical condition on Monday after surviving a single gunshot to the head fired at point-blank range at a gathering Saturday morning with constituents outside a supermarket in Tucson.

Doctors said they were increasingly optimistic because Ms. Giffords continued to follow simple commands and there had been no additional swelling in her brain. Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tucson, cautioned that swelling in cases like this could last days.

“At this stage in the game, no change is good,” Dr. Lemole said.

Doctors removed nearly half of Ms. Giffords’s skull to prevent damage to her brain caused by swelling. While she has remained under sedation, hospital officials corrected earlier statements that she had been in a medically induced coma.

An outpouring of grief has been on display around the country. In Washington, President Obama stood with his wife, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White House at 11 a.m. as a single bell tolled to honor the wounded and the dead. On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides gathered to observe the moment.

“Obviously all of us are still grieving and in shock from the tragedy that took place,” Mr. Obama said in the Oval Office, where he was meeting on Monday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

“Gabby Giffords and others are still fighting to recover,” said Mr. Obama, who is planning a trip to Tucson on Wednesday to meet with victims and their families and offer his first extensive public remarks since the shooting. “Families are still absorbing the enormity of their losses.”

At the start of the State Legislature’s session in Phoenix on Monday, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, decided to scrap the traditional annual address laying out her legislative agenda and instead honor the dead and call upon people across the state to pray.

“Arizona is in pain, yes,” Ms. Brewer said. “Our grief is profound. We are yet in the first hours of our sorrow, but we have not been brought down. We will never be brought down.”

Meanwhile, new details emerged about the suspect’s actions before the shooting, which was carried out with a Glock 19, a medium-size, 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol.

In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on a 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he had completed a diversion program so the charge was never actually on his record — the incident stuck in the mind of Judge José Luis Castillo of Pima County Consolidated Justice Court.

It was unusual, for one thing, the judge said, that anyone knew how to go about filling out such forms. And the judge’s review of the court record showed that Mr. Loughner had completed the diversion program in 2007 in almost record time and had been very polite, with nothing to indicate the kind of behavior that was to come.