With the finding last Thursday by an Annapolis jury that the Capital Gazette gunman was indeed criminally responsible for the brutal, calculated murders three years ago of five employees at the newspaper — friends and colleagues to those of us here at The Sun — the legal chapter of this horror story largely comes to a close.
The shooter, whose only expressed regret was not killing more people, will most certainly be consigned to spend the rest of his life in prison at his sentencing, still to come. There is no longer any possibility that he will be sent to a psychiatric hospital, as he and his lawyers had been angling for, peddling a thin defense that he had a mental disorder that prevented him from understanding the consequences of his actions. The jury members clearly saw through that effort, determining after a brief deliberation that he not only understood the criminality of his actions, but was capable of acting lawfully — when he wanted to.
How could they not? The gunman fantasized about the June 28, 2018, attack at the Annapolis news office for five years as he went about his day-to-day life, and he actively plotted it for at least two. He put together multiple backup plans, studied patterns of police responses to mass shootings and tailored his actions to ensure he would get out alive. Once inside on that fateful day, he coldly began firing and would later express delight to a state psychiatrist at discovering a survivor, whom he then executed at point blank range.
“He was proud of what he’d had done,” the doctor testified during the three-week trial to determine the gunman’s mental capacity.
We commend our colleagues at The Sun, the Capital Gazette and other media outlets who day in and day out watched the proceedings, subjecting themselves to every painful detail to ensure the public received a full accounting of the process, and our hearts go out to the survivors who relived their terror on the witness stand in support of justice.
Of course, the idea that justice has been served is fiction. The sanity of the shooter won’t bring back his victims: editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, a married father of three who is forever frozen at 59; editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, who had a “wicked pen” and wry wit, 61; sports writer John “Mac” McNamara, whose one-liners were legendary, 56; sales assistant Rebecca Smith, who was engaged to be married, 34; and community correspondent Wendi Winters, whose three weekly columns brought neighbors closer together, 65.
There is no sense to be found in these deaths, carried out as revenge by a man who felt he had been wronged because the newspaper wrote about a campaign of harassment he once waged against a former high school classmate.
We won’t use his name here. He wanted to be famous, notorious, and we won’t help further his cause. He is relegated to a lesson, not a legacy.
The legacy belongs to Rob, Gerald, Mac, Rebecca and Wendi. Last month, on the anniversary of their deaths they were memorialized in five granite pillars collectively known as “The Guardians of the First Amendment.”
This editorial first appeared in The Baltimore Sun last Friday. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Dominion Post.
