Two and a half years ago, biology professor Amy Bishop who studied on nitric oxide’s effect on motor neurons opened fire on a group of University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) colleagues, killing three—department chairman Gopi Padila and professors Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson—and wounding three others. Yesterday, Bishop pled guilty to one count of capital murder. This is a change from her earlier plea of not guilty, which rested on her lawyers’ plan to use the insanity defense.
"I'm certainly happy that she is going to be held accountable," Lynn Boyd, a UAH professor who was in the room when the shootings occurred, told The Chronicle of Higher Education. "The stress of wondering whether she was going to get away with it is now gone."
Though it’s unclear what motivated Bishop’s violence spree, people who knew her noted her anger after the University refused her tenure, which would have effectively ...
