Jarrod Ramos: Capital Gazette gunman found criminally responsible after shooting five dead in newsroom

Defence lawyer says mental illness ‘looks like looks like a man in his late 30s, living alone in a basement, urinating in bottles, not bathing for weeks at a time, creating a written manifesto of sorts’

A jury has found that the man who opened fire in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland in 2018, killing five people, is criminally responsible for the shooting and could not use insanity as a defence.

Three years after the killings, a jury found on Thursday that Jarrod Ramos, 41, had the mental and emotional capacity to be held responsible for the deaths.

Mr Ramos has been held in Anne Arundel County jail since the events of 28 June, 2018 and faces life in prison.

Before the start of the trial judging his sanity started, he had already pleaded guilty to 23 counts following the attack on the newspaper he had long felt animosity towards.

His public defenders requested the sanity trial, which opened up the possibility for him to be sent to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital and possibly be released if the jury had not found him criminally responsible for the attack.

Mr Ramos’ lawyers said, along with four expert doctors, that because of mental disorders, he didn’t have the capacity to understand his crimes or to ensure that his actions followed the law.

Experts for the defence diagnosed Mr Ramos with autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and delusional disorder. They said these issues increased his obsession with the paper as well as the Maryland judiciary after he lost a defamation case against the Gazette. Living with that obsession for years, he planned attacks on the judges and reporters.

The lawyers described Mr Ramos as only having a meaningful relationship with his cat.

“Mental health is real,” defence attorney Matthew Connell argued. “Jarrod Ramos’s mental health is real.”

“It’s hard to define mental illness, but you know it when you see it,” Mr Connell told the jury. “And this is what it looks like. It looks like a man in his late 30s, living alone in a basement, urinating in bottles, not bathing for weeks at a time, creating a written manifesto of sorts.”

The jury decided on their verdict told Mr Ramos criminally responsible less than two hours after the start of deliberations.

Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters were killed in the shooting.

An employee at the Capital Gazette newspaper is seen during the 2018 shooting that killed five people. (Surveillance footage / Court documents)

Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess argued that Mr Ramos was calculating and self-obsessed and that he spent seven years planning an attack seeking revenge.

“He was one step ahead of the people he considered his opponents,” she said.

In 2018, Mr Ramos killed four journalists and a sales assistant in the worst attack on a media outlet in the US.

In late June, the jury was shown images of the victims, surveillance footage of the attack, and police body camera video of Mr Ramos coming out from under a desk inside the newsroom and police taking him outside.

This photograph of an image in court evidence made public on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 from surveillance video shows what authorities say is Jarrod Ramos shooting open the door of the Capital Gazette office on June 28, 2018 in Annapolis, Md. (AP)

Wendi Winters attacked Ramos with a trashcan and subsequently dropped to the floor in a hallway. Gerald Fischman died underneath his desk. Rob Hiaasen was in his cubicle when he died, and John McNamara died in the back of the newsroom. Rebecca Smith died in hospital.

Mr Ramos had previously failed in suing the paper for defamation and had made several online threats against the media outlet. He was enraged at the paper because of a 2011 article called “Jarrod wants to be your friend” about a young woman whom Mr Ramos had harassed online.

A photograph of the 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun authorities say was used by Jarrod Ramos in the mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper three years ago is shown in evidence after court on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 in Annapolis, Md. (AP)

He unsuccessfully sued the paper in 2012, arguing that the paper had defamed him after it reported on his conviction for harassment. The suit was dismissed as groundless.