Mentally Ill Shooter Sentenced to Life After Jury Rejects Insanity Plea

Tragic Supermarket Shooting and Family’s Claims of Possession

Ahmad Alis­sa, a men­tal­ly ill gun­man, was sen­tenced to life in prison for the 2021 mas­sacre at a Col­orado super­mar­ket that left 10 peo­ple dead. 

Alis­sa’s attempt to avoid prison by plead­ing not guilty by rea­son of insan­i­ty was reject­ed by the jury, as his fam­i­ly told the court they believed he was pos­sessed by an “evil spir­it” at the time of the attack.

Victims’ Families Seek Justice and Closure

The vic­tims’ fam­i­lies recount­ed the dev­as­tat­ing impact of the tragedy, with one sis­ter lament­ing the life mile­stones she would no longer be able to share with her slain brother. 

While some were unable to for­give, oth­ers, like the daugh­ter of a slain police offi­cer, said they would not hold onto bit­ter­ness and had for­giv­en Alissa.

Prosecutors’ Argument and Jury’s Rejection of Insanity Plea

Pros­e­cu­tors argued that Alis­sa was aware of his actions, as evi­denced by his deci­sion to tar­get cer­tain vic­tims while ignor­ing others. 

The jury reject­ed the insan­i­ty plea, find­ing that Alis­sa’s men­tal ill­ness did not meet the legal cri­te­ria for insan­i­ty, which requires an inabil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish right from wrong.

Sentencing and Family’s Claims of Mental Illness

Alis­sa, now 25, was sen­tenced to 10 con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for the mur­ders, as well as an addi­tion­al 1,334 years for the oth­er offenses. 

His fam­i­ly had tes­ti­fied that he became with­drawn and para­noid a few years before the shoot­ing, with his con­di­tion wors­en­ing after he con­tract­ed COVID-19 in late 2020.