A psychiatrist retained by the defence is set to testify for the seventh straight day at the trial for the man who killed 10 people on a Toronto sidewalk with a rental van.
Posted Dec 08, 2020, 06:13AM EST
A psychiatrist retained by the defence is set to testify for the seventh straight day at the trial for the man who killed 10 people on a Toronto sidewalk with a rental van.
CityNews reporter Adrian Ghobrial is covering the trial, follow his tweets below:
Dr. Alexander Westphal is nearing completion of his testimony in the trial of Alek Minassian, who has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 of attempted murder.
The defence argues the 28-year-old should be found not criminally responsible for his actions on April 23, 2018, due to autism spectrum disorder.
Westphal has said Minassian lacks empathy and does not understand the moral wrongfulness of killing 10 people, but said a finding of criminal responsibility is a legal matter rather than a psychiatric one.
On Monday, the court heard that Minassian would tell his victims he committed the attack because he was lonely and angry at society. He gave that explanation to Westphal in one of the pair’s numerous meetings in 2019 and earlier this year.
But Westphal said Minassian was just saying what he thought victims would want to hear.
Crown attorney Joe Callaghan said that Minassian’s comments on what he would tell his victims demonstrated his ability to view the perspective of those he attacked.
Westphal, as he has much of the past several days of cross-examination, disagreed with Callaghan.
The psychiatrist has previously testified that due to his autism spectrum disorder, Minassian does not have the ability to take the perspective of others.
In his report on Minassian that was submitted to the court, Westphal concluded the man was not psychotic at the time, but had “an autistic way of thinking that was severely distorted in a way similar to psychosis.
Court also heard Monday that Minassian had thought about abandoning the attack right up until the moment he stopped at a red light across the street from his first group of victims.
Minassian has admitted to planning and carrying out the attack, which leaves his state of mind at the time the sole issue at trial.
Another psychiatrist previously testified Minassian does not meet the test to be found not criminally responsible.
