Month: June 2024

The gunman who opened fire in an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing five and injuring over a dozen more in 2022, was sentenced on federal charges on Tuesday. Daniel Davis Aston, Kelly Loving, Derrick Rump, Ashley Paugh and Raymond Green Vance were the victims killed in the attack.

After originally pleading not guilty, the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 24, accepted a plea deal and 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 was given 55 concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole, to be followed by a 190-year sentence of imprisonment. Aldrich is already serving five consecutive life terms and an additional 2,212 years without the possibility of parole at the Wyoming State Penitentiary after pleading guilty in 2023 to state charges for the attack.

Earlier this year, prosecutors said earlier this year they would not seek the death penalty. United States District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney, the first LGBTQ+ federal judge to serve in Colorado, handed down the sentence after hearing from the victims’ families and survivors of the shooting, many of whom were disappointed Aldrich would not face a capital sentence. Sweeney said they not have the discretion to impose a different sentence, citing the plea agreement, but emphasized the importance of Aldrich’s decision to plead guilty, saying that Aldrich admitted to carrying out the attack because of the victims’ “actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation.” Sweeney said during sentencing: “you [Aldrich] went to this community’s safe space and mass murdered people .. This community is much stronger than you, stronger than your armor and stronger than your weapons and sure as hell stronger than your hatred.”

Editorial credit: Neil Podoll / Shutterstock.com

On Tuesday, a New York Court declined to hear an appeal to remove the gag order in former President Donald Trump’s hush-money conviction case. Per NBC News, the New York Court of Appeals said it was dismissing Trump’s appeal “upon the ground that no substantial constitutional question is directly involved,” meaning the gag order remains in effect.

Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s criminal conviction case, prohibited Trump from discussing witnesses, jurors and others associated with his criminal trial, which ended in a conviction last month. The judge himself and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg were exempt. An intermediate appellate court upheld the gag order, finding Merchan “properly weighed petitioner’s First Amendment Rights against the court’s historical commitment to ensuring the fair administration of justice in criminal cases and the right of persons related or tangentially related to the criminal proceedings from being free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm.”

Trump was found guilty in May by a jury of his peers on all 34 counts against him in his New York hush-money trial, for allegedly falsifying business documents in an attempt to cover up an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He has since denied the affair and pleaded not guilty to all charges prior to his conviction while maintaining his innocence

Trump has objected to the gag order, as well as violating the court order multiple times during the trial and has been fined $10,000 in the process. Trump’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 11, four days before the July 15 start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee where Trump is expected to accept the Republican nomination, in-person or virtually.

Editorial credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com