BOULDER, Colo. — State experts have found that the man accused of shooting and killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 had an untreated mental illness but was legally sane at the time of the attack, attorneys said Tuesday.
The results of Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa’s mental health evaluation, conducted at the state psychiatric hospital, are not public, but were discussed at a hearing while Alissa, dressed in a prison uniform and his wrists in shackles, and relatives of some of the murdered people listened.
According to the defense, evaluators found that the attack would not have occurred without Alissa’s untreated mental illness, which defense attorney Sam Dunn said was schizophrenia, including “auditory hallucinations.” He also said the raters were “less confident” in their common-sense conclusion than they would be in other cases, but did not explain why.
Prosecutors themselves did not provide any details about what evaluators found during the hearing. District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who said he is limited to commenting on what has been made public about the review, declined to comment on Dunn’s description of the review’s findings.
“I look forward to the trial, and these are issues that will be fully adjudicated at trial,” Dougherty said after the hearing.
Alissa has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the March 22, 2021, shooting rampage at a King Soopers store in the college town of Boulder. The plea means his lawyers argue that he did not understand the difference between right and wrong at the time of the shooting and therefore should not be convicted of a crime.
Investigators say he researched how to carry out a mass shooting before launching his own attack and targeting moving people, killing most of the 10 victims in just over a minute using a pistol with a high-speed magazine. capacity.
Alissa’s mental health was raised as an issue by his lawyers immediately after the shooting, and the question of whether he was mentally competent to stand trial – able to understand court proceedings and assist his lawyers in his defense – delayed the proceedings for about two years. . After Alissa was forcibly medicated and subsequently deemed mentally competent to continue, he was found not guilty on an insanity plea in November.
Judge Ingrid Bakke on Tuesday granted the defense’s request to have Alissa’s mental health at the time of the shooting assessed for a second time by their own expert, but she rejected their proposal to postpone the trial until March 2025 to giving them time for that process. Instead, she postponed the trial for only about a month and scheduled it for September 2, after hearing strong objections from relatives of the victims and in letters she submitted to the court.
As Alissa sat near his attorneys, Erika Mahoney, whose father Kevin Mahoney was killed in the shooting, urged Bakke to allow the families to head into the fall with the trial behind them so they can enjoy Christmas and Hanukkah could continue to celebrate now that that chapter was closed. .
During a lengthy conversation between the lawyers and Bakke, Erika Mahoney was not hopeful, but she was relieved when the judge postponed the trial for only a month.
“It’s funny what you become grateful for,” she said after the hearing, “but I’m grateful to know that this is moving forward.”