The author of a murderous shootout in a local American newspaper, who pleaded insanity, will not escape prison, a jury having declared him on Thursday, July 15 criminally responsible for the crime.
After brief deliberation, the twelve jurors ruled that Jarrod Ramos, 41, could be sentenced for the attack three years ago on the
Capital Gazette
, a court spokesman told AFP.
It is now up to a judge to pronounce his sentence.
He faces life imprisonment.
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Armed with a shotgun, Jarrod Ramos burst into the newsroom of the local Annapolis newspaper on June 28, 2018, an hour outside of Washington.
He had killed five people before being arrested.
The drama, one of the worst attacks on a media outlet in the United States, had sent shock waves through the country.
Then president, Donald Trump had denounced a
"horrible"
assault
which
"shocks the conscience of our country"
.
"The crime was monstrous, we thank the jurors for having listened to the stunning testimonies, watched the horrible videos and the horrible photos"
, commented Andrea Chamblee, the widow of the sports journalist John McNamara who died in this bath of blood.
Indicted of murder, Jarrod Ramos pleaded guilty in 2019. But his lawyers claimed that mental disorders impaired his judgment and demanded that he be sent to a psychiatric hospital and not to prison.
A trial had been organized to decide.
For three weeks, it mainly gave rise to a battle of psychiatric experts.
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Defense lawyer Matthew Connell had finally appealed to the jurors' common sense.
"It's hard to define mental illness"
, but
"it looks like it when a thirty-something lives alone in a basement, urinates in bottles, doesn't wash for weeks and writes sort of manifestos"
, a- he said in his plea, reported by the American media. But prosecutors said he was narcissistic and acted "out of revenge and following a careful plan" after being hurt in his pride by the newspaper.
Jarrod Ramos had a conflicted relationship with the
Capital Gazette
after he unsuccessfully attacked it for defamation and threatened it several times on the Internet. He blamed him for an article from 2011 entitled
"Jarrod wants to be your friend"
, in which the newspaper recounted the ordeal of a young woman whom he had harassed on the Internet, which had earned him a 90-day suspended prison sentence. . He had spent two years preparing for his attack, had scouted and even taken out a chess club membership in anticipation of his detention.
