A man who killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 has been found guilty of murder in the attack, failing in his attempt to be acquitted by reason of insanity. Ahmad Alissa was convicted by jurors on Monday, ensuring he will receive a life sentence in prison rather than psychiatric treatment in a state hospital.
Insanity defenses in the U.S. have historically faced challenges before juries, with high-profile cases like James Holmes, who killed 12 people in a movie theater in 2012, and John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, failing to secure acquittals based on insanity claims.
Legal expert Christopher Slobogin from Vanderbilt University noted that insanity defenses are successful in only about 25% of cases that go to trial, with the majority of insanity acquittals occurring through plea deals with prosecutors.
The purpose of the insanity defense, according to Slobogin, is to allow a jury to consider whether a crime occurred due to a person struggling against irrational thoughts they couldn't control, leading to a mental break.
Following the Hinckley case, Congress and several states raised the standards for insanity convictions, with some states even abolishing the insanity defense altogether. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could restrict defendants from pleading insanity without violating their constitutional rights.
Notable cases like Andrea Yates, who drowned her children in 2001, and Jarrod Ramos, who shot five people in a newsroom in 2021, have showcased the complexities of insanity defenses in the legal system. Yates was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity after a retrial, while Ramos was swiftly deemed criminally responsible despite his plea of not criminally responsible due to a delusional disorder.
In the case of the Colorado movie theater gunman, James Holmes, his insanity defense was rejected by the jury, leading to a life sentence in prison for the mass shooting that claimed 12 lives and injured 70 others.
