A court hearing scheduled to start Wednesday could reveal the motivation behind the shooting at Club Q, a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs that left five people dead. The suspect, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, who is nonbinary, could face hate crime charges if prosecutors can present enough evidence that Aldrich was driven by bias, either wholly or in part. Until now, prosecutors have not revealed why they charged Aldrich with a hate crime.
Aldrich was known to family and friends and in official government documents as a male until defense attorneys revealed after the shooting that Aldrich was nonbinary. Someone who is a member of a group of people, such as the LGBTQ-plus community, can still be charged with a hate crime for targeting peers. Hate crime laws are focused on the victims, not the perpetrator.
During this week’s hearing, Aldrich could give up their right and avoid new details about the investigation from being made public. Prosecutors usually win preliminary hearings since the standard of proof is lower than a trial and the evidence must be viewed in a light most favorable to them, but defense lawyers sometimes still want to go forward with a preliminary hearing.
Questions remain on how Aldrich got the gun used in the shooting, but experts say how and where Aldrich obtained it does not have to be discussed in order to convince the judge to rule that there’s enough evidence to take the case to trial. However, former District Attorney George Brauchler, who prosecuted the case against the shooter who killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora in 2012, said he hopes prosecutors present evidence about the gun.
“It’s not a whodunit. It’s not a what happened. It’s a why did it happen,” Brauchler said. The shooting was captured on surveillance video, which showed Aldrich opening fire indiscriminately at patrons. Prosecutors will have to present enough evidence to support their allegation that it was a hate crime.
