Five people were killed in the attack on the LGBTQ bar.
The shooter who killed five and injured over a dozen more at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2022 accepted a plea deal Tuesday in connection with federal hate crimes charges and was given 55 concurrent life sentences.
Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to each of the 74 charges of violating provisions of the Matthew Shepard And James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 as well as gun crimes in the Club Q shooting. Aldrich initially pleaded not guilty.
United States District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney accepted the plea agreement, sentencing Aldrich to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, to be followed by a 190-year sentence of imprisonment.
Why the plea deal? Was the case against him not strong enough?
It saves the government and courts (and by extension tax payers) a whole lot of time and money. There’s no need for a normal trial and all the extra crap that comes of that (like appeals). It also removes/reduces the risk(s) of a death penalty sentence (much more expensive than a life sentence), further trauma for the victims as well as their friends and families, and avoids the extremely unlikely but still possible chance that the accused is found not guilty or uses some other legal maneuver to avoid real consequences.
Life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 190 years, and the defendent waves almost all of his appeal rights. All of that without needing to go through the efforst, expense, and trauma of a trial. The prosecutors were only able to get this deal because the case against them was so strong.