Testimony has wrapped and the jury was expected to return to court Friday morning for closing arguments in the trial of the man who killed 10 people in a 2021 attack on a Boulder King Soopers. That means the jury could have the case by Friday afternoon in a trial that was delayed for years.
The case was never about whether or not the defendant fired the gun that killed 10 people, including a Boulder police officer. Rather, the defense argued that the shooter’s mental state should absolve him of legal responsibility.
For perspective on that defense, and on the task that will be before the jury, Denver7’s Jason Gruenauer spoke with Brad Sjostrom, the Director of Behavioral Health at AdventHealth.
Watch Jason's conversation with Sjostrom in the video player below.
Sjostrom described what he calls an “extremely difficult” task for the defense. Only about 1% of cases end with a defendant found not guilty by reason of insanity, he said.
“In essence, the defense has a case they have to prove,” Sjostrom said. “They have to prove that A) their client was psychiatrically ill and B) the client caused harm due to that illness.”
The defense spoke at length about the suspect’s schizophrenia and voices he allegedly heard at the time of the attack. Sjostrom, though, said that defense may have fallen short of proving causality.
“We ended up in a situation where we lack evidence to suggest that at the time of the crime, his mental health symptoms made him incapable of distinguishing right from wrong,” Sjostrom said. “However, we also weren't fully able to rule out that maybe there was some sort of psychotic process going on.”
Denver7's Colette Bordelon has been covering the trial since day one – and the case since the shooting happened. She breaks down what to expect during closing arguments in the video player below.
The family of the defendant, who is Muslim, took the stand during the trial to argue that his mental illness went untreated for years – at least partly due to cultural norms.
"Untreated mental illness would certainly cause one to have more symptoms, would cause one to have more difficulty getting treated," Sjostrom said. "[But it doesn't necessarily point in either direction."
“So I think we know for certain he has a mental illness. But I think that testimony indicates that it was not the psychosis that caused him to commit the murders.”
Editor's note: Denver7 has chosen to not include the defendant's name in our coverage of the trial to respect victims and their loved ones, and to not glorify the defendant. This trial aims to determine if the defendant was insane or not at the time of the shooting — not if he shot and killed people at the King Soopers, which the defense is not contesting. Therefore, we have removed words such as "alleged" and "suspected" from our trial coverage when referring to him.
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