Jurors have begun deliberating whether a mentally ill man who said he heard “murderous voices” should be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 or not guilty by reason of insanity.
In their closing arguments Friday, prosecutors argued that Ahmed Alisa, who suffers from schizophrenia, proved he was legally sane after stockpiling guns and ammunition to kill as many people as possible in a shooting rampage in Boulder and knows right from wrong.
But defense attorney Katherine Herold told jurors that Alyssa told state psychiatrists she heard voices screaming in her head, including what she described as “murderous voices” before the shooting. Psychologists who found Alice sane at the time of the shooting said she never gave any details about the voices or whether they said anything. However, Alice told them she thought the voices would stop if she carried out a mass shooting.
Experts thought the voices she heard played a role in the attack and did not believe it would have happened if Alice had not had mental illness.
Herold asked jurors to imagine what it would be like to hear voices in their heads screaming in court: “Kill, kill, kill, kill!”
Mental illness is not legally the same as insanity. In Colorado, insanity is defined as a mental illness so severe that a person finds it impossible to tell the difference between right and wrong.
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The prosecution pointed to Alice’s actions on the day of the shooting to show she knew what she was doing. She used steel armor-piercing bullets and an optical sight that placed a red dot on her victims before shooting all but one, Assistant District Attorney Ken Kupfner said during closing statements. Everyone she shot died.
Alyssa shot Kevin Mahoney in the parking lot before he climbed onto the hood of a car so he could get a better shot with his semi-automatic pistol, Kupfner told jurors. Alice chased Mahoney and continued shooting as the man tried to get back into the store.
“The defendant was persistent and relentless,” Kupfner said.
Herold accused prosecutors of trying to appeal to jurors’ emotions by presenting graphic videos of the attack and detailed testimony from victims, though no one disputed that Alice was the shooter.
“When you remove that emotion, it becomes clear that madness is the only explanation for this tragedy,” he said.
Herold noted that the two court-appointed state psychiatrists who determined Alice was sane at the time of the attack had some reservations about their findings because Alice did not share more information with them, even though it could have helped her case.
He told the jury they had to decide whether he was insane.
During the two-week trial, the victims’ families watched video footage of the shooting on surveillance and police cameras. Survivors testified how they escaped, helped others and hid. The emergency room doctor climbed onto the shelf and hid among the bags of potato chips.
Herold questioned comments witnesses said Alice made during the attack, including “It’s funny,” which was inconsistent with the lack of emotion experts found when they met Alice. He said he thought their brains were trying to make sense of what was happening.
Several of Alisa’s relatives, who immigrated to the United States from Syria, testified that she became withdrawn and less vocal as the years passed. She later began acting paranoid and showed signs of hearing voices, and her condition worsened after she contracted COVID-19 in late 2020, they said.
Alice’s mother told the court that she thought her son was “sick.” Her father testified that he thought Alice might be possessed by an evil spirit and that her condition was embarrassing to her family.
Her parents and several of Alice’s siblings sat in the courtroom for the first time during Friday’s hearing, just a few feet behind her. Alice fidgeted during the arguments, sometimes focusing on the lawyers and other times appearing distracted and looking around the room.
The victims’ relatives mostly sit on the other side of the room.
Alice has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, multiple counts of attempted murder and other felonies, including possession of six loaded ammunition magazines in Colorado after previous mass shootings.
On March 22, 2021, after exiting his car, Alice began shooting at the store, killing most of the victims in just over a minute. He killed a police officer who responded to the attack and then surrendered after an officer shot him in the leg.
Kupfner said Alice felt an adrenaline rush and a sense of power from shooting people, though prosecutors offered no motive for the attack. Kupfner said Alice first began searching public places like bars and restaurants in Boulder for the attack, before focusing her search on department stores the day before the shooting. Alice found her first grocery store when she drove to Boulder from her home in Arvada, a Denver suburb, she said.
Defense attorneys did not have to present evidence in the case, and experts did not suggest he was insane.
Slevin writes for the Associated Press.
