Capital Gazette Killer is Sane, Court Rules

Three years after his rampage at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Md., and after pleading guilty to the murders of Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John Mc­Namara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendi Winters, Jarrod Ramos has been found to have had had the mental and emotional capacity to be held criminally responsible for the mass shooting. He will likely spend his life in prison or a maximum-security psychiatric hospital, reports the Washington Post.

During the three weeks of his insanity trial, Ramos’s defense had argued that his mental disorders created a delusion that led to the deadly attack, relying on the testimony of expert doctors and claiming that autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and delusional disorder had fed his fixation with the Capital Gazette and the Maryland judiciary. Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess told the jury that Ramos chose that particular afternoon because there were supposed to be many people in the newsroom. He blocked the exits to trap his victims and set decoys for law enforcement to slow their response, all of which attested to the fact that he was able to control his actions at the time of the shooting.