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A security guard stands outside the superior court of justice in Toronto, Ontario, during the first day of the trial for accused van attacker Alek Minassian in November.
A security guard stands outside the superior court of justice in Toronto, Ontario, during the first day of the trial for accused van attacker Alek Minassian in November. Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images
A security guard stands outside the superior court of justice in Toronto, Ontario, during the first day of the trial for accused van attacker Alek Minassian in November. Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

Toronto van killer's autism defence enrages advocacy groups

This article is more than 3 years old

Alek Minassian, who has admitted killing 10 and injuring 16 others, claims he is not criminally responsible because of his mental state

Lawyers for Alek Minassian do not deny that he drove a rental van down a crowded sidewalk on Toronto’s busiest street on a spring afternoon two years ago, unleashing a frenzy of terror and pain in Canada’s largest city.

His actions in April 2018 took the lives of Renuka Amarasingha, Betty Forsyth, Ji Hun Kim, Dorothy Sewell, Anne Marie D’Amico, So He Chung, Andrea Bradden, Chul Min (Eddie) Kang, Geraldine Brady and Munir Najjar. Sixteen others were left with serious injuries, including brain damage and amputated limbs.

None of that has been denied by Minassian’s legal team during his trial for murder.

Minassian has already admitted to renting the van and plowing through crowds of pedestrians – but he pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.

Minassian’s five-week trial has focused entirely on his mental state at the time of the attack. Defence lawyers say Minassian’s autism spectrum disorder impeded his ability to understand the wrongness of his actions – an argument that has prompted outrage from advocacy groups.

An Ontario judge must now determine if the 28-year-old should be convicted of mass murder or found not criminally responsible (NCR) for the act.

It is believed to be the first in Canada where autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been used as the sole diagnosis in questions over criminal responsibility.

Autism advocacy groups have condemned Minassian’s legal defence, saying it further stigmatizes those with the disorder.

“In reality, people on the autism spectrum and with other disabilities are much more likely to be victims of crime, rather than the perpetrators,” Autism Ontario said in a statement. “The myth that autism causes criminal behaviour is exactly that: a myth.”

The group instead pointed to the “proliferation of misogynistic and other supremacist ideas” as the root of Minassian’s actions. “These horrific crimes were actions driven by cultivated misogyny and a sense of entitlement, not by autism.”

As the trial came to an end on Friday, superior court justice Anne Molloy referred to concerns in the autism community, saying that autism itself was not on trial. Instead, she said, the court was concerned with a highly specific question of Minassian’s mental state at the moment of the attack.

Prosecutors say Minassian – motivated by his hatred of women and radicalized by the extremist “incel” movement – craved infamy and was willing to kill innocent people to achieve it.

In the closing arguments on Friday, they pointed to that desire for notoriety and Minassian’s extensive planning before the attack as evidence that he understood his actions were wrong.

“Fundamentally, it’s the Crown’s submission that he had the capacity to make a choice,” said lawyer Joe Callaghan. “And in this case, there’s no evidence he ever lost the fact of the wrongness of his actions. He always had an understanding, an awareness – more than awareness – that from society’s perspective, his choice to kill was wrong.”

A court sketch depicts the Crown attorney Joe Callaghan, clockwise from top left, Justice Anne Molloy, the accused Alex Minsassian and expert witness Dr Alexander Westphal. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

After his arrest, Minassian described himself as “a murdering piece of shit” and told police that he had been inspired by other men who had used violence as a form of retribution for their own sexual frustration.

“I think it would require you to ignore everything Mr Minassian has actually said when asked about his knowledge of what he did and whether it was wrong,” psychiatrist Dr Scott Woodside, who testified for the Crown, told the court earlier in the trial.

Minassian’s defence team have countered that his autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevents him from making rational decisions and appreciating the moral wrongness of his actions.

“Just because he uses certain ‘magic words’ … [it] doesn’t mean he understands them at all,” lawyer Boris Bytensky said on Thursday.

The defence relied heavily on the testimony of Dr Alexander Westphal, a Yale University psychiatrist who interviewed Minassian and told the court that the accused lacked the capacity to “understand fully why it is morally wrong to kill people” because he saw them as mere “objects”.

But Westphal said he was unable to make a “determination” in terms of Minassian’s criminal culpability.

After considering closing arguments and testimony from medical experts, Justice Molloy – who will rule on the case alone – must determine, if on a balance of probabilities, Minassian has the ability to understand his actions.

“She can’t just throw up her hands and say, ‘This is too hard’. We’ve tasked past judges with these difficult, seemingly impossible tasks and at the end of the day, they have to make a decision,” said Angela Chaisson, a lawyer who has worked on previous NCR cases.

Part of what makes Molloy’s decision so difficult is the nature of an NCR finding. A person not criminally responsible is institutionalized for an indefinite period, until they can demonstrate they are no longer a risk to the public.

“Being found not criminally responsible is the only mechanism in our criminal justice system of indefinite detention. Murderers don’t get indefinite detention. Those responsible for double, triple or quadruple homicides of children don’t get indefinite detention. But NCR verdicts do,” said Chaisson. “It is the most severe consequence in our criminal justice system – is the closest thing that we have to someone’s life in our hands.”

Molloy is expected to hand down her decision on 3 March.

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