Dennis Wagner

The Republic | azcentral.com

UPDATE: The lawsuit was dismissed Thursday by a federal judge who ruled that the complaint was a hoax submitted by a chronic prankster.

A lawsuit filed in federal court alleges convicted mass murderer Jared Loughner is innocent of a 2011 shooting spree near Tucson because government agents planted mind-control chips in his head as part of bizarre conspiracy.

The rambling civil complaint filed in Loughner's name at the U.S. District Court in Phoenix identifies his most famous victim, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, as the defendant, and seeks $25 million in damages.

Loughner is serving a life sentence at the Federal Correctional Center in in Rochester, Minn., for a shooting rampage five years ago that killed six people — including a child and a federal judge — and left 13 others, including Giffords, injured. Evidence indicated he had a delusional obsession with Giffords, his primary target, whose head wound forced her to leave Congress.

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While awaiting trial, Loughner was diagnosed as schizophrenic, causing his case to be delayed until medical treatment rendered him competent. He eventually pleaded guilty to avoid a potential death sentence.

A spokesman at the federal prison in Minnesota could not be reached Wednesday to provide information on Loughner's mental condition.

Court officials and Loughner's criminal defense attorney could not be reached to verify the lawsuit's authenticity. An envelope filed with the complaint contains the correct inmate number and a return address to the prison, but appears to have been postmarked in Philadelphia.

The suit filed March 18 begins: "My incarceration is illegal. I am actually innocent. I was Framed. I am a victim of project mk-ultra the govt. put a chip in my head to control my mind. The Zeitgeist is part of a new world order to create false flag attacks…"

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Project MKUltra was a CIA program during the mid-1900s that employed drugs, chemicals and other methods for interrogations and mind control — sometimes with unwitting suspects. Exposed and condemned by Congress, it ended in 1973, before Loughner was born.

With tortured grammar, the civil action attempts to link Giffords with a hodgepodge of historical events and debunked conspiracy theories. It claims, for example, that Loughner was subjected to "chemtrails in the skies above me which is getting me sick and delusional." There are references to presidential assassinations, wiretaps by the National Security Agency, waterboarding, and the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. The suit even complains, out of the blue, that Loughner's prison diet contains "no peppers, steaks, fruit juices," and he cannot get C-SPAN on TV.

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Giffords, co-founder of the national gun-control organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions, could not be reached for comment.

Federal courts are obliged to accept civil actions regardless of the contents, but they maintain a process to deal with cases that are clearly frivolous and without merit. According to a legal notice online, the complaint was referred to a magistrate and legal staff. In that document, Clerk Brian Karth concluded with a message apparently for the plaintiff: "When any action is taken in this case, you will be notified by court order."

Gabrielle Giffords shooting: A fatal chain of events unfolds