Amy Bishop, the former biology professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, pleaded guilty to murder charges, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Bishop was accused of shooting and killing the chair of the biology department and two colleagues during a faculty meeting, and wounding three other faculty members.
With her guilty plea to one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder, the Chronicle says that Bishop avoids the death penalty and is to be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Previously, she pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, and the Nature News Blog notes that the jury trial was to begin toward the end of the month.
The Nature News Blog adds that Bishop has been indicted for murder in the 1986 shooting of her brother in Massachusetts, an incident that had previously been ruled accidental.