WILL THE MASS KILLER FAKE INSANITY?

Alwek Minasian is the perpetrator of the Toronto van attack that occurred when he purposely drove a van down a sidewalk on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto, Ontario on April 23, 2018  and  killed ten pedestrians and injuring  sixteen others.

He is charged with ten counts of first degree murder and sixteen counts of attempted murder.

A legal defence may be raised as a likely last defence that he is not criminally responsible” (NCR) by reason of suffering from a mental disorder.

There is no doubt in my mind that his actions were definitely not what a normal-minded person would do but that isn’t  proof that he didn’t know what he was going or didn’t know that what he did was both morally  and legally  wrong. To think otherwise i is a real stretch of our understanding of common sense. 

When he was being questioned by the police, he was calm and made a clear admission of renting a van and purposely ramming it into pedestrians which he said during questioning by Toronto police hours after last year’s van attack. His statement  seems starkly at odds with his plea of not guilty especially when he told the police that he planned the attack and was not sorry for what he did to the pedestrians  he killed and injured.

Before I take you into the minds of these kinds of killers, I want to give you part of my background on this subject.

In the early 1970s, I studied abnormal psychology at the University of Toronto for a year and I also studied criminal law for  

two years at that same university. For five years, I also conducted individual and group counselling with prisoners in a correctional facility. Some of them had mental issues effecting their lives

Now   I will admit that many persons who kill human beings are calm when they confess to their crimes. That is because they are those kinds of people who have no empathy towards other human beings they killed.  

There are some similarities between psychopaths and sociopaths. Both psychopaths and sociopaths have mental disorders that can be treated or alleviated through therapy and medication once properly diagnosed. Their symptoms generally begin to be outwardly established at approximately fifteen years of age and are initially manifested by excessive cruelty to animals or meanness to other human beings. As their mental illness progresses, the main symptoms include. a lack of what society normally deems as  a ‘conscience and a  lack of remorse or guilt for their hurtful actions to others.

They have an intellectual understanding of appropriate social behavior but no emotional response from the actions of others. They lack the ability to form genuine relationships and they also act inappropriately in their responses to perceived slights by seeking revenge against those they have perceived as  having done them wrong or against people in general for the wrongs of others.

Minasian said  in his  answers during his questioning in an interrogation room by Det. Rob Thomas that he planned and committed the van attack as part of an “incel rebellion.(Incel, is short for involuntary celibate), which is a violent ideology held by some men who feel dangerously aggrieved by their inability to attract sexual interest from women.

There are millions of men who are unsuccessful in having sex with women but they don’t murder people to alleviate their disappointments of being refused sex by women.

Minasian said that he wanted to kill more pedestrians. He did it for a reason. And he was pleased with himself when he managed to pull it off. How did he feel afterwards, he was asked. He replied, “I feel like I accomplished my mission.”

When the public became aware of the contents of his chilling four-hour interrogation for the first time after its release, it led to one glaring question: How can he possibly claim  that he is not guilty?

He could be found not guilty if the court determines that he didn’t know what he was doing.

The pending trial of Minassian for 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder is now set to focus squarely on his mental health. In pretrial materials, Boris Bytensky, Minassian’s lead lawyer, wrote that his client’s “state of mind at the relevant time and in the days, weeks and months leading up to April 23, 2018, are expected to be the central issues at trial.”

He could be found not guilty if the court determines that he is not criminally responsible” (NCR) by reason of suffering from a mental disorder.

The trial judge, Justice Anne Molloy Ontario of the Superior Court, went further in a recent pretrial ruling, noting the identity of Minassian as the driver during the van attack is not in issue. Minassian’s lawyer has not disputed the admissibility of Minassian’s confession to police.

And it seems inconceivable that he could claim the attack was done in self-defence.  But to make such a statement valid, his lawyer with the testimony of retained psychiatrists  who would would have to convince the court that Minassian was literally mentally ill when he drove the van into his victims.  That leaves “not criminally responsible” (NCR) by reason of mental disorder as a likely last defence.

This, however, will be challenging  in some measure because of his comprehensive interrogation, a video of which was publically released on September 27^th  after a legal challenge mounted by Postmedia and joined by other news organizations.

“You have to consider what was said in the interview with the police which happened reasonably quickly after the incident. Minassian appears to be oriented as to time and space and he was  not thought disorganized. He doesn’t appear to be suffering from a break with reality,” said Ian Scott, a Toronto defence lawyer and law professor at Western University.

This mass killer clearly had the ability to plan his crime and he had the ability to drive, which in itself indicates he was fairly well oriented. And his motivation — although it is very difficult for us to understand it — is not one that suggests he is suffering from voices in his head telling him to drive down the sidewalk and kill people.

He was surprisingly lucid when he was answering questions. He does not fit in any of the classical understandings of having the most usual major mental disorder that people have when found to be NCR, which is schizophrenia.

This mass killer is somebody who is very angry at the world however, that is not a defence in law.

The court has to consider the moment in time when the crime was being committed as to what was going through the mind of the accused at the specific moments when he was driving the van into his victims. The court has to weigh how that information learned during the interview with the police relates temporally and otherwise the mental state of the person at the time of the commission of the offence and not how they were given at the time of the interview.

 According to Section 16 of the Criminal Code of Canada, a person is not criminally responsible a crime committed “while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong.”

The question of the meaning of the phrase is that his mind is disturbed” is one of statutory interpretation. The grammatical and ordinary sense of the word, in the Criminal Code, the provision’s legislative history, evolution, and the jurisprudence interpreting the phrase “HIS mind is then disturbed” do not support the conclusion that Parliament intended to restrict the concept of a disturbed mind to those who have “a substantial psychological problem”. Rather, the phrase “mind is then disturbed” should be applied as follows: (a) the word “disturbed” is not a legal or S medical term.  It should be applied in its grammatical and ordinary sense; (b) in the context of whether a mind is disturbed, the term can mean “mentally agitated”, “mentally unstable” or “mental discomposure”; (c) the disturbance need not constitute a defined mental or psychological condition or a mental illness. It need not constitute a mental disorder under s. 16 of the Criminal Code or amount to a significant impairment of the accused’s reasoning faculties such as (d) the disturbance must be present at the time of the act or omission causing deaths of the people he killed and the act or omission must occur at a time when the accused was not fully recovered from the effects of a medical disease; (e) there is no requirement to prove that the act or omission was caused by the disturbance. The disturbance is part of the actus reus (criminal act) of driving his van into the pedestrians. (f) the disturbance must be by reason of the fact that the accused was actually suffering from some form of medical illness that actually denied him the ability to act legally and morally.  So far, I haven’t learned of this mass killer suffering from some kind of medical illness. Many people have weird ideas and beliefs but that doesn’t mean that they are insane. 

The public does not need to fly into a panic because Minassian’s mental health is being assessed, or even if his lawyer wins  a successful defence. The result of an NCR designation, at the end of the day, is not an acquittal. There is a very common public misunderstanding that the NCR designation is a get-out-of-jail-free card. That is not what happens.

I can’t predict the future, but whatever facility he is in, whether it’s a correctional one or a mental health one, he is going to be spending a long, long time there.  If he is sent to a prison, he ill never be released because in Canada, every murder conviction must be punished by a sentence of 25 years  and if more than one murder is committed, those sentences will be consecutive.

Meanwhile, Minassian’s trial is scheduled to begin in February. 2020. I will keep you informed when his trial is over.