A jury has found 25-year-old Ahmad Alissa guilty of murder for his 2021 shooting rampage that killed 10 people at a grocery store in Colorado. The defence had argued that he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity due to a schizophrenia diagnosis, but this plea was rejected by the jury. District Attorney Michael Dougherty argued that Alissa’s intentional and methodical actions during the attack showed he was sane.
Despite Alissa’s mental illness diagnosis and claims of hearing “killing voices,” state forensic psychologists ultimately determined that he was capable of telling right from wrong at the time of the attack. Alissa’s family reported that he had become increasingly paranoid and withdrawn in the years leading up to the shooting, but he had not received any mental health treatment.
The trial included harrowing testimonies from survivors, detailing how Alissa shot and chased people both inside and outside the grocery store. Prosecutors highlighted his use of illegal magazines and steel-piercing bullets as evidence of a deliberate and planned attack. While the state psychologists acknowledged the role of Alissa’s mental illness in the attack, Colorado law requires a severe mental disease to be so debilitating that a person cannot distinguish right from wrong to qualify for an insanity defence.
Alissa, who emigrated from Syria to the US as a child, did not provide a clear motive for the shooting. The verdict has stirred debate on the intersection of mental illness and criminal responsibility in the justice system. Alissa now faces the possibility of life in prison for his deadly actions.
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