By Brian Brant
(ANNAPOLIS, Md.) The gunman who killed five people inside the Capital Gazette newsroom in 2018 was found criminally responsible for his actions on Thursday.
NBC 4 reports it took only two hours for a jury to find Jarrod Ramos accountable for the murders, declining his attorney's claims that he was too mentally ill to be guilty.
Ramos pleaded guilty in 2019 to all 23 counts against him, for the June 2018 murders of John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, Rob Hiaasen and Rebecca Smith.
At the beginning of the trial, his attorney Katy O’Donnell argued Ramos was guilty, but because he believed the newspaper was trying to ruin his life and persecute him for writing a story about his failed 2012 defamation suit, he was unfit to take responsibility for his actions.
The finding of the Annapolis jury means Ramos will now be sentenced to prison, rather than a maximum-security mental health facility.
"This is a really bittersweet day here in Annapolis,” county prosecutor Anne Colt Leitess said after the verdict was announced.
Prosecutors are seeking five life sentences without the possibility of parole for conducting the deadliest attack on a newsroom in modern U.S. history.