Why the Colorado King Soopers Shooter’s Insanity Plea was Rejected Even Though He Heard Voices in His Head

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The verdict against Colorado King Soopers shooter Ahmad Alissa was handed down today. Guilty. The jury took only 6 hours to return the verdict, rejecting the defense’s contention that he was insane, even though it was clearly established that he’d had mental health issues and heard voices in his head on the day of the shooting. Voices that he thought might stop if he committed the shooting. So why was his insanity plea rejected, particularly given that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia following the shooting?

Clearly a person who is hearing voices in their head is very mentally disturbed. Most people would consider this “insane”. However, when it comes to law, and to an insanity defense, there is a very specific set of circumstances which must be present in order for a defendant to be considered to be ‘legally insane’.

Under Colorado law, the definition of legally insane, such as to render one not responsible for one’s actions at the time of the crime (so in the King Soopers shooter’s case, during the shooting at the King Soopers supermarket), one must meet the following test:

The defendant must either be “so diseased or defective in mind as to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong”;

OR

The defendant must be “suffering from a condition of the mind caused by mental disease or defect that prevented them from forming a culpable mental state that is an essential element of a crime charged.”

The bottom line, in plain English, is that (generally speaking, of course there is a lot of nuance here) if the defendant, at the time of the commission of the crime, was able to tell right from wrong, then they were not insane for the purpose of the law. And it is that standard to which the jury must adhere.

Moreover, as the University of Colorado at Boulder explains, “Colorado is one of 11 states in which the burden of proof in an insanity case lies with the state. That means it’s up to the prosecution to demonstrate that {the defendant} was sane at the time of his crime.”

In the case of the King Soopers shooter, the prosecution’s case was made much easier by the fact that the doctors at the mental health hospital at which he was being held concluded that he was sane on the day of the shooting, and even the defense’s experts could not bring themselves to say that he was insane on that day.

It also likely didn’t help that Ahmad Alissa had told someone involved with his case that “I deserve the death penalty.” (Fortunately for him Colorado did away with the death penalty in 2020.)

For more in-depth information about the case itself, check out this coverage on Colorado Public Radio


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Author: Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.

This article is authored by Anne P. Mitchell, Attorney at Law. A graduate of Stanford Law school, Anne is a law and policy attorney, a legislative advisor, a Federal law author, and both professor and dean emeritus. She has served as chair of the Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop, counsel to the (e)Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), and currently serves on the board of directors of IX-West/IX-Denver.

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