Prosecutor: Newspaper gunman killed 5 in revenge for article

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The man who murdered five people at a Maryland newspaper acted out of revenge for an article about his prior harassment case that he believed would hurt his ability to get dates with women, a prosecutor said Thursday during a trial to determine whether the shooter is criminally responsible due to insanity.

Anne Colt Leitess, the prosecutor, gave her opening statement after defense attorneys rested their case. Defense attorneys said Jarrod Ramos suffers from multiple forms of mental illness that precluded him appreciating the criminality of his conduct. But Leitess said that while Ramos has personality disorders like narcissism, he does not have serious mental illness that qualifies him to be found not criminally responsible for five murders.

“He has issues with his personality,” Leitess told the jury. "They are things that make him eccentric or odd — not things that make him insane.”

Mental health experts for the defense contend Ramos suffers from a delusional disorder, as well as autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a psychiatrist retained by the defense, testified that the combination of mental problems caused him to attack the Capital Gazette newspaper on June 28, 2018.

Defense attorneys argue Ramos suffered from a paranoid delusion that he was the victim of a vast conspiracy involving the newspaper and the courts blocking his efforts to try to rehabilitate his reputation after a 2011 article about him pleading guilty to a harassment charge against a former highs school classmate. His 2012 lawsuit, which alleged that the paper defamed him, was dismissed as groundless. His appeals failed.

His attorneys say Ramos actually thought he was doing the right thing by attacking corruption.

“It was his obsession with an...