Driver using van in Toronto kills 10 injures 15

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Alek Minassian wanted to kill 100 people, but ‘satisfied’ with 10 deaths, court hears

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Any blowback for Canadian autistics? This must be a fraught time to be autistic in Canada.

Alek Minassian clearly understood what he was doing was morally wrong because that was part of his motivation for carrying out Toronto’s worst mass killing, a forensic psychiatrist testified Friday.

“That, in fact, is part of the calculation. He was going to morally outrage people. This is part of how he become famous, by doing something that people will recognize as a horrible, horrific act,” said Dr. Scott Woodside, explaining his opinion that Minassian is criminally responsible. “You have to do the worst thing, the most pain... his degree of infamy depends on that.”

Woodside, however, said this is a high-level view of moral reasoning that most people don’t normally do — in day-to-day life we just follow the rules and laws automatically, including the most universal rule: don’t kill other people.

And while Minassian does lack empathy and some ability to feel the emotions of other people, he has the intellectual capacity to work through moral decisions and has shown some ability to take the perspectives of other people, Woodside said. Minassian himself said he consciously chose to block out thoughts that would have stopped him from carrying out the attack — selfishly focusing only on his own goal and ignoring the consequences to anyone else, Woodside said.

And this was “not a complex moral dilemma,” Woodside said, nor were his actions impulsive.

Via a pre-written Facebook post sent during the attack, Minassian deliberately set a narrative — a connection to the misogynistic incel ideology and mass killer Elliot Rodger — to ensure maximum media attention and chose tactics to cause maximum carnage, Woodside said.

“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,” Woodside said, referring to the opposing view that Minassian didn’t know what he was doing was morally wrong.

Woodside also took issue with a central tenet of defence expert Westphal’s conclusion: that Minassian’s stated motives are incoherent and therefore the only explanation is that he had no comprehension of the impact his actions would have on other people.

Woodside said frequently fantasizing about mass murder and reading positive reinforcement of those ideas can lead to dehumanizing potential victims as a means to an end. But Minassian repeatedly said “this is something he really, really wanted to do,” and he provided a number of motivations behind that, Woodside said.

Woodside said he saw no indication that Minassian had lost touch with reality or that his thinking was distorted in the way Dr. Westphal argued. He also said that while Minassian has trouble expression emotion, it does not mean he is “devoid of emotion” internally, Woodside said.

Woodside also said that while some of Minassian’s social challenges are linked to his autism spectrum disorder, that does not explain all of it. Minassian was also very worried about failure, Woodside said.

Woodside also disputed the idea that Minassian was obsessed with mass murder, the incel ideology and the writings of another mass killer to the point that he was delusional or indoctrinated. Minassian was able to understand that incel ideology was flawed and was not, as with some people with autism who have extremely focused interests, able to only discuss that one subject, Woodside said.

The trial continues Monday when Woodside will face cross-examination by the defence.

Dr. Scott Woodside says Alek Minassian was able to push out thoughts of his victims like a sexual predator pushing out the harms he would cause to a child.

The central question in the case is whether he knew what he did was morally wrong.

The defence argues Minassian did not, due to a deficit in empathy and an inability to understand the damage the attack wrought, which stems from his autism spectrum disorder.

In this case, his decision was not about reasoning, this was something he very much wanted to do whether right or wrong,” Woodside said.

Woodside, a forensic psychiatrist at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, compared Minassian’s compartmentalization to sex offenders he’s assessed.

The six-week trial for the man who killed 10 people by deliberately driving a van onto a busy Toronto sidewalk is nearing an end as the final witness finished his testimony Tuesday.

Dr. Scott Woodside, a forensic psychiatrist and star witness for the prosecution, emphasized Alek Minassian knew what he did was morally wrong.

Woodside said Minassian’s split-second decision to change his plan did not mean he didn’t know what he was doing was morally wrong, as his defence team maintains.

“I don’t think it’s so much a question of where he’s going to commit the act, as much as he’s going to commit it,” Woodside said in a re-examination by Crown attorney John Rinaldi.

Closing arguments are scheduled to start Thursday.

After weeks and weeks of testimony, this was the final chance for Alek Minassian’s lawyer to argue the mass killer shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

Instead, he should be found not criminally responsible for killing 10 people and injuring 16 others due to his autism spectrum disorder.

While the Richmond Hill man clearly understood his killing spree was legally wrong, his lawyer said autism spectrum disorder (ASD) left him incapable of feeling the necessary empathy towards others that would have made him realize it was also morally wrong.

“Mr. Minassian was not thinking about the impact on others before, during or after the offence,” Bytensky said.

Instead, he was hyper focused on mass murder websites and was seeking notoriety by moving up the “kill count” leaderboard.

“It was an act similar to playing a video game with the tangible metric of a final score tallied on Encyclopedia Dramatica,” Bytensky said.

“The impact of his ASD was to distort his thinking so severely that he felt he had a binary choice: Fail at my job, which I haven’t started yet and is a good job, or commit mass murder — that’s what his choice came down to.”

Bytensky said. “He’s not interested in outrage, he’s just interested in statistics.”

Minassian’s ASD robbed him of the capacity to properly weigh the factors — such as the impact on others — that go into making a rational choice, he argued.

“When he says ‘I knew it was morally wrong,’ with the greatest of respect, he doesn’t. He says it, but he doesn’t understand what it means because he doesn’t have the tools to know the emotional impact.”

The man who killed 10 people by deliberately driving down pedestrians on a Toronto sidewalk is a mass murderer who happened to have autism spectrum disorder, the prosecution said Friday.

Prosecutor Joe Callaghan said in closing arguments that Alek Minassian’s autism spectrum disorder — or ASD — didn’t push him to carry out the attack on April 23, 2018.

Rather, Minassian knew what he was doing was wrong, the prosecutor said.

“This is about a person who committed mass murder who happened to have ASD, not that the ASD made him commit murders,” Callaghan said.

This is about a person who committed mass murder who happened to have ASD, not that the ASD made him commit murders,” Callaghan said.

The six-week judge-alone trial, which was held by video conference due to the pandemic, concluded Friday. Justice Anne Molloy is to give her verdict on March 3.

At the end of the day, the judge addressed the concerns of the disability community.

“Let me be clear, autism is not on trial, Alek Minassian is on trial. He happens to have autism,” Molloy said. “The issue at this trial is whether the particular impact of ASD on this particular person at this particular point in time was such that he should not be held criminally responsible for his actions.”

The verdict in Toronto's van attack trial will be broadcast on YouTube on Wednesday.

Minassian's trial was conducted over Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prosecutor: Autism didn't make Toronto van attacker kill 10

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Legally the judge is correct in the court of public opinion I am not so sure. It sure has felt that autism was on trail. That is why I am happy the judge said what she said.

The judge who found Alek Minassian guilty of murder and attempted murder in the Toronto van attack has set Canadian precedent by considering autism a “mental disorder” under the Criminal Code.

Justice Anne Molloy ruled that autism did not leave the 28-year-old not criminally responsible for killing 10 people and injuring 16 others, but her decision to consider that possibility means the argument could be made in future cases.

Molloy noted, however, that the decision does not “say anything at all about any connection between ASD and criminality,” and each case must be decided based on the specific circumstances.

The only other Canadian case that had argued someone was not criminally responsible due to autism was appealed, and Molloy said the appeal judge did not rule on whether autism left the accused criminally responsible.

Molloy ruled that autism is a mental disorder by the Criminal Code’s definition because it is a permanent condition with an “internal cause, rooted in the brain” that “has an impact on brain functioning and thought processes.”

“In its severe manifestations, and particularly where there are comorbidities, ASD might cause a person to lack the capacity to appreciate the nature of an action or to know that it is wrong,” she wrote, underlining the word “might” in the decision.

I tend to agree with Dr. Westphal’s point that without ASD Mr. Doe would not have committed these offences. Mr. Doe’s life would have been quite different if he did not have ASD, and those aspects of his life experience that led him to commit these offences are likely inextricably connected to that diagnosis. I emphasize, however, that establishing a s.16 NCR defence requires far more than this simplistic “but for” test.

On the other hand, Dr. Wright advanced the interesting theory that Mr. Doe’s actions might not be as connected to his ASD as everyone seems to accept. He noted quite a few similarities between Mr. Doe and the attributes associated with school shooters, as described in much of the scholarly literature in this area. Dr. Wright referred in particular to the classification system developed by Dr. J. Reid Meloy (and others) in an article written in 2001 and testified that Mr. Doe fit quite well within the category called “classroom avengers.”84 According to Dr. Wright, common characteristics of school shooters include: they are typically seen by their peers as loners; they have a history of being bullied at school; they engage in a lot of fantasy; they are preoccupied with weapons; and they often have served in the military. All of these apply to Mr. Doe, with the possible exception of being obsessed with weapons. The self-image of a school shooter often features self-reproach, another characteristic shared by Mr. Doe. Dr. Wright also testified that the extent to which Mr. Doe is “haunted” by his past failures is unusual for a person with ASD, but quite typical for a classroom avenger. Further, school shooters often fixate on another highly-publicized mass killing and seek to emulate the perpetrator, and typically described their offences afterwards in a detached and “chilling” manner. Again, these are both features that fit Mr. Doe. Dr. Wright’s point is that there may be more than ASD at play here, and more than one explanation for the lack of empathy and emotional connection displayed by Mr. Doe. Either way, however, Dr. Wright did not see the lack of empathy as something that could ground a defence under s. 16 of the Criminal Code, and I agree with him in that regard.

Roxanne Mykitiuk, a professor of disability law at Osgoode Hall Law School, said she worries about the implications of Molloy's decision.

"I am a little bit concerned about the overbreadth of autism spectrum disorder becoming conceptualized as a mental disorder and not perhaps some small portion of individuals who are on the spectrum with particular kinds of characteristics," she said, though she added that figuring out a way to narrow that down could be tricky.

Alex Echakowitz, who spent a year in the same high school homeroom as Minassian, said she was shocked when Molloy said autism qualifies as a mental disorder under the Criminal Code.

"With all due respect to Justice Molloy, I feel as though she tried to wash her hands of any responsibility for the stigma that follows," said Echakowitz, who is autistic.

"The reality is she can say this has no bearing on people with ASD as a whole and speak to the morality of autistic people, but now the idea is in the public's head."

Kim Sauder, an autistic activist who uses the pronouns "she" and "they" interchangeably, said the defence's arguments played into inaccurate stereotypes that autistic people are somehow dangerous, while downplaying other aspects of Minassian's life.

"It completely ignores the deep-rooted misogyny that was very prevalent in what he did and why he did it," she said.

But Sauder said it was fair of Molloy to open the door for someone to be deemed not criminally responsible due to autism in the future.

She said there are some circumstances where she could imagine that being the case, for instance if an autistic person accidentally injured somebody else while in the throes of a meltdown.

But Mike Cnudde, a spokesman with Autism Ontario who is on the autism spectrum, worried that Molloy's judgment "threatens to push us back into the dark ages."

He said it was difficult to watch Minassian's defence lawyers use autism to try to explain the attack.

"How dare he use this defence to hide behind," Cnudde said. "This was the worst kind of stigmatization."

He said he's glad the judge saw through Minassian's argument and delivered a guilty verdict, but the decision came with mixed feelings.

That Molloy opened the door for others to use autism in a similar defence means this case isn't the end of the story for those in the autism community, he said.

"If this defence pops up again, we'll start the whole process of stigmatizing people on the spectrum again," Cnudde said.

"But you have to keep fighting the good fight -- the answer is more educuation and more acceptance."