Details of Loughner's life emerge from testimony, file
...Prison officials won't talk about Loughner's confinement. His family and attorneys have turned down interview requests. Pietz didn't return calls. But a fascinating glimpse into his world emerges from court testimony by Pietz and from others who have reviewed his file.
Right after Loughner's arrest, news reports detailed his bizarre rantings and strange videos on the Internet. In March, prosecutors asked that he be evaluated for his paranoid fears and the voices he was hearing.
Pietz met him on March 23. He sat on his bed. She was in a hallway, talking to him through a grill. He looked at her out of the corner of one eye. He laughed at things that weren't funny and cried at things that weren't sad.
It was during high school, in 2006, that Loughner started having trouble. That year he drank so much vodka he had to be taken to the emergency room.
"His family got him to seek treatment," James Ballenger, a forensic psychiatrist who read Loughner's prison evaluations and testified about them, said.
Ballenger and Pietz told the U.S. District Court in Tucson that Loughner was spiraling into schizophrenia by early 2008. He heard voices and acted strangely.
By the time he was in prison, the illness was raging. He threw chairs and wads of wet tissue paper at the cell-door grill when he saw video cameras. He stripped and showered in front of female guards.
On May 25, during a court hearing in Tucson, Loughner burst into a rant and called U.S. District Judge Larry Burns "your cheesiness." Burns ruled him unfit for trial.
On June 21, the prison team began giving him drugs. Loughner took Risperdal, an anti-psychotic drug, mixed with Kool-Aid in a paper cup.
Two days later, prison officials agreed to his request for a TV. He switched it off after 30 minutes, complaining that it was planting messages in his head.
On July 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the forced medication, stopped and Loughner entered the darkest chapter of his confinement.
He got "significantly worse," Pietz testifed.
He paced in circles up to 14 hours one day.
"He created a blister on his foot," Pietz said. "The blister became infected. The infection actually moved up his leg."
At one point in early July, he stayed awake for 50 hours. He spun in circles on his buttocks for two hours. He flung his feces onto his bed.
On July 8, the prison put Loughner on suicide watch, where he remains. Staff took everything out of his room that he might use to hurt himself and removed the shower curtain so he could be seen by a hidden camera.
By July 18, Loughner had deteriorated so much that the clinical team decided to give him emergency forced medication without a court order because he was an imminent danger to himself.
Since then, Lougher has gradually improved.
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