HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Amy Bishop pleaded guilty this afternoon to capital murder charges in Madison County Circuit Court in an agreement that will send her to prison for the rest of her life.
UAH shooter Amy Bishop heading into the courtroom to plead guilty to capital murder on Sept. 11, 2012. (The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz)Bishop, 47, will not be eligible for the death penalty under the terms of the agreement.
She stood before Judge Alan Mann and entered one guilty plea to capital murder and three pleas of attempted murder.
Bishop is accused of killing three fellow biology department faculty members in an on-campus shooting rampage on Feb. 12, 2010 and wounding three others.
Prosecutors stated that Bishop's plea confirms the facts of the case, that she stood up in a faculty meeting with a 9 mm pistol, shot and killed biology professors Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson, and Biology Department chair Gopi Podila, and shot and wounded professors Joseph Leahy and Luis Cruz-Vera, and staff assistant Stephanie Monticciolo.
She then left the scene and was captured by police trying to flee, according to prosectuors.
A Harvard-trained biologist, Bishop has four children.
Bishop was denied tenure by the university in 2009 and had exhausted the appeals process before the shooting.
Under Alabama law, a capital murder defendant who pleads guilty still must have a jury hear the evidence against them. If Bishop enters the plea, a condensed version of the case -- the facts would no longer be in dispute -- is expected to be held Sept. 24. Her trial was supposed to start Sept. 24.
Amy Bishop, accused of killing three and injuring three others at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in a courtroom at the Madison County Courthouse to plead Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012 in Huntsville, Ala.(The Huntsville Times/Eric Schultz)Bishop has been held in the Madison County Jail since the shooting. Madison County Circuit Judge Alan Mann is presiding over the case.
At the end of the hearing, Mann directed attorneys not discuss the case until after the trial is complete, so they could not explain how the guilty plea agreement came about.
Updated at 1:17 p.m. to reflect that the trial was to start Sept. 24.
