Repeat After Me: Autism Spectrum Disorder Does Not Lead To Psychopathy

People stop to drop off flowers and read notes at a memorial wall at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue in Toronto on April 25, 2018, two days after the deadly van attack in which 10 pedestrians were killed. Photo by Veronica Henri/Postmedia News

"Mr. Doe thought about committing these crimes over a considerable period of time and made a considered decision to proceed. His attack on these 26 victims that day was an act of a reasoning mind, notwithstanding its horrific nature and notwithstanding he has no remorse for it and no empathy for his victims."

"Everything depends on the particular circumstances of the individual and how they are affected by their disability."

"[Minassian] knew that his plan to run down and kill people constituted first-degree murder and that if arrested, he would go to jail for the rest of his life. That is why his plan was to 'die-by-cop'. Death being preferable to jail."

"Mr. Doe knew that the vast majority of people in society would find an act of mass murder to be morally wrong. However, he apparently wanted to achieve fame and notoriety, believing that even negative attention for his actions would be better than to live in obscurity."

"He had been fantasizing about a crime such as this for over a decade. He has been able to use his intellect to compensate for some of his impairments. He chose to commit the crimes anyway, because it is what he wanted to do. This was the exercise of free will by a rational brain, capable of choosing between right and wrong. He freely chose the option that was morally wrong, knowing what the consequences would be for himself and for everybody else."

"It does not matter that he dos not have remorse. Nor empathize with the victims."

Judge Anne Molloy, Ontario Superior Court

The composite illustration shows the 10 people killed in the Toronto van attack on April 23, 2018. Top row, from left to right: Anne Marie D'Amico, 30, Dorothy Sewell, 80, Renuka Amarasingha, 45, Munir Najjar, 85, Chul Min (Eddie) Kang, 45, Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Forsyth, 94, Sohe Chung, 22, Andrea Bradden, 33, Geraldine Brady, 83, Ji Hun Kim, 22. On Wednesday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy ruled Alek Minassian was criminally responsible for his actions and that he's guilty on all 26 counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder. (CBC)

"Autism does not predispose people to criminality, nor to the incapacity to make moral distinctions."

"People on the Autism Spectrum are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it." 

Dermot Cleary, chairman, Autism Canada

Alek Minassian. Photo by LinkedIn via CP

Before she commenced her public reading of portions of her 68-page verdict, Justice Molloy mentioned her decision not to utter the name of the mass murderer for the simple reason that Alek Minassian committed his calculated, unspeakable crime with personal notoriety as his goal. She would henceforth, she explained, refer to him as "John Doe". For his crimes an automatic life sentence would be advanced, but whether Judge Molloy will make that concurrent or consecutive for the multiple murders is not yet known; if consecutive he could theoretically be sentenced to 250 years in prison -- which on the face of it seems fair enough. Twenty-five years for each of the lives he destroyed.

 

To attain that goal  he had rented a large van to drive the 1.2 kilometres along Yonge Street sidewalks in north Toronto on April 23, 2018, in the process killing ten innocent people of all ages, and seriously injuring another sixteen people. Under police questioning he would not deny this was a deliberate act; he stated, in fact, his disappointment at the death toll, feeling that had he killed one hundred people, his goal might better have been accomplished. More women had to have been killed to fully satisfy him of a job well done. He cited the 'incel' movement as a reason for his action.

 

He closely followed the group online, calling themselves 'involuntary celibates' in that they were men whose experience with women left them angry and bitter, claiming that their 'type' failed to impress women and how unfair it all was, and they wouldn't stand for it. Their revenge was to dream of killing women to indicate their rage over the unfairness of it all. Alek Minassian admired those men who had struck out to kill women, identifying themselves as 'incels', and he wanted, he claimed, to gain a reputation of his own, to draw attention and admiration to himself as a mass murderer.

 

Police are in Toronto after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into a number of pedestrians on Monday, April 23, 2018. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim / The Canadian Press

And while not hesitating to claim the murders he committed were intentional, and also, paradoxically, claiming that since he was autistic, it clouded  his judgement, that he failed to realize the gravity of what he purposed to do, moreover, that it was morally wrong to commit such an atrocity, that he should therefore  be found innocent, as a result, under the legal defence of not criminally responsible, due to an existing mental disorder. This would have been a first in a Canadian court as grounds for a not criminally responsible verdict, a situation that drew angry condemnation from autism support groups.

 

During the six-week trial just concluded, four psychiatrists and a psychologist testified, all of whom expressed their professional opinions on the 28-year-old's mental status. Although Judge Molly acknowledged that Minassian "has significant deficits" as a result of the autism he was diagnosed with as a child, referring in particular to his social and emotional interactions with others, including his inability to feel empathy for other people, she noted he has no cognitive impairment. 

One of the medical professionals who testified whom Minassian's defence relied upon, Dr.Alexander Westphal, an American psychiatrist specializing in autism, testified at length on the way autism interfered with Minassian's capacity to interact with the world. "There were many times in Dr.Westphal's testimony when he appeared to be more of an advocate than an objective expert witness", Justice Molloy noted in her verdict, dismissing the psychiatrist's conclusions. The other expert medical witnesses cast doubt upon autism as a cause of Mnassian's actions.