Has Clarence Dupnik’s jihad against conservatives been a ploy to divert attention from his own responsibility for the mass murder?

On January 8 Reuters reported:

The suspect in Saturday’s shooting rampage in which a U.S. congresswoman was critically wounded was unstable and had been known to make death threats in the past, the local sheriff said….

[Sheriff] Dupnik said there had been earlier contact between Loughner and law enforcement after he had made death threats, although they had not been against Giffords.

Similarly, on January 9 the Arizona Daily Sun reported:

Dupnik said the suspected shooter has made death threats before and been contacted by law-enforcement officers. The threats weren’t against Giffords, Dupnik said.

If this is true, then it wasn’t a matter of someone who was mentally ill but who couldn’t be confined because he hadn’t yet done anything sufficiently threatening. When it comes to a mentally ill person who is making death threats, the authorities may certainly confine him. Dupnik didn’t do this. So, as it now appears, and as various conservative bloggers are charging (see this and this), Dupnik started off his demonization of conservatives to get himself off the hook.

There is a big problem with this theory, however. If Dupnik is trying to cover up his failure to take steps against Loughner, why would he have told the media about Loughner’s previous death threats about which he, Dupnik, did nothing?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 11, 2011 01:24 PM | Send