Club Q Shooter Avoids Death Penalty

metroweekly.com:

mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, will plead guilty to 74 counts of federal hate crime and gun crime charges as part of a plea deal arranged with the U.S.

Department of Justice.Aldrich is expected to receive “multiple concurrent life sentences plus additional consecutive sentences totaling 190 years imprisonment,” if a judge accepts the plea deal.According to a news release from the Department of Justice, both Aldrich’s lawyers and the department jointly filed a motion to schedule a change of plea hearing for Aldrich and the sentencing hearing on the same date.

While the court has granted that motion, a date has not yet been selected.Aldrich entered Club Q, a popular LGBTQ nightclub, on November 19, 2022, dressed in body armor and armed with a rifle and a handgun.

He opened fire inside the club and continued firing until he was subdued by a couple of patrons.Five people were killed, and 19 were injured in the attack, which prosecutors claim was committed because of the actual or perceived sexual orientations or gender identities of club patrons.Aldrich is currently serving five consecutive life sentences, plus an additional 2,208 consecutive years without the possibility of parole, at the Wyoming State Penitentiary after pleading guilty in June to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder — one for each patron on the Club Q premises on the night of the mass shooting.Under the terms of the federal plea agreement, the United States will agree not to seek the death penalty against Aldrich, reports CNN.Aldrich, whose lawyers claim identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns “they/them,” visited Club Q multiple times before the attack — ostensibly because their mother “forced” them to.