The murder trial of Ahmad Alissa, who faces multiple charges in the killing of 10 people at a King Soopers in Table Mesa in Boulder three years ago, has reached its final days after two weeks of complex and often emotional testimony.

The prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments to the Boulder jurors on Friday.

It is rare that mass shooters go to trial because many of them are either killed by police, kill themselves or plead guilty.

The King Soopers shooting case is believed to be the first time in Colorado that a jury has been tasked with determining the sanity of an accused mass shooter since the 2015 trial of Aurora Theater gunman James Holmes. 

The Denver Gazette spoke with Dr. William Reid, one of court-appointed psychiatrists in the 2012 Aurora shooting, who interviewed Holmes for 23 hours over several sessions in both Arapahoe County jail and the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, where the gunman was taken for further examination. Reid is currently a consultant in other large mass killing cases. He is not involved in the King Soopers case.

He interviewed the theater gunman five times two years after the shooting.

The interviews were videotaped, and, since the gunman did not testify, the footage was the only time the jury heard from the defendant during his 47-day trial. 

Similarly, since the reported King Soopers gunman did not take the stand, the jury only saw him speak during his mental health evaluation videos. In contrast to the theater shooter, the King Soopers defendant was guarded with his words and never gave a motive for his alleged crimes. When asked why during his evaulations, he said,  “It was the voices. That’s it.” 

He did explain planning the shooting during a forensic psychiatrist’s interview in the summer of 2024. Mental health professionals speculated that occurred in part due to the fact that he was taking the schizophrenic drug, Clozapine. 

The theater shooter’s forensic interviews were done at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo where the gunman was a patient, and also at the Arapahoe County jail.

In this interview, Reid said that Holmes was obsessed with killing and noted that both he and Alissa went into the event prepared to die but then surrendered to the police.  

Denver Gazette: How much time did you spend interviewing the Aurora Theater shooter?

William Reid: I interviewed him for 22-23 hours on video not counting just seeing him in passing in different places.

DG: Can you give us some insight into James Holmes?

Reid: Well, by the time I saw him he was responding to medication and getting better. But the medications didn’t stop his obsession with killing. That doesn’t mean planning additional violence, but it was on his mind. His words were something like, “Yeah, you’d have to worry about me in prison.”

Remember his idea was that he got points for everybody he killed. The points had no particular meaning, but he liked having them. 

DG: So, you’re saying that two years after he killed a dozen people and injured 58 others, he’s still having these thoughts?

Reid: That’s what he said and I believe he was being honest with me. 

(Editor’s note: Former 18th Judicial District Judge Carlos Samour agreed with Holmes’ attorneys to omit certain statements from the shooter’s videos before trial, including that one.)

Reid: The judge allowed the defense attorneys to remove 20 minutes of the 23 hours of video before trial. Some of the redacted material had to do with his talking about the death penalty. Another little piece, oddly enough, had to do with whether he went to church as a kid. I don’t know why. 

DG: Are there any similarities between the two cases which strike you?

Reid: I have very little information about the King Soopers shooting, but I noticed that the alleged shooter in the King Soopers case gave up right away without a fight and without trying to kill himself. The same thing happened with Holmes. 

DG: It was brought out during testimony that the King Soopers shooter wanted to kill himself going in, but then he changed his mind.

Reid: A lot of people think about suicide, or say things like, “I’m not going to prison” or “I’ll die first.” But when it comes right down to it, most people don’t choose to die.

DG: Both gunmen were diagnosed schizophrenic and both said that they heard voices at some point, but in both instances, those voices did not tell either man to commit mass murder. Do voices and hallucinations due to schizophrenia mean a person is insane? 

Reid: You raise an extremely important question for trials and for juries. Whether one has schizophrenia or not is relatively irrelevant to whether or not one is legally insane or legally not responsible at the time of an alleged crime. 

Clinical diagnoses and symptoms may or may not be relevant to the specific question and when they are, the relevance must be translated from clinical language to language of the court. 

The question at trial is whether or not the person met the legal criteria for sanity or responsibility for one’s act at the time of the event. One can theoretically be quite psychotic and not in touch with reality weeks, days, or even hours before an event but meet the legal criteria for sanity. It gets complicated for both psychiatric experts and the jury or judge who must make the ultimate decision.

DG: It took less than two minutes for the man to reportedly kill 10 people at the Boulder King Soopers. Are you talking about from the time he killed the first person? 

Reid: Speaking in generic terms, and I want to be clear, I did not work on this case. But the beginning of the shooting event may be loading of one’s weapons or putting stuff in his car before he leaves his house or possibly earlier. A lot depends on context.

DG: So, you’re not saying he had to know the difference between right and wrong only while he’s pulling the trigger? 

Reid: Common sense says before the perpetrator pulls the trigger he’s got to have the gun with him anyway, he’s got to go to the place where the event occurs, get out of his car in the parking lot, things like that. It’s inaccurate to say nothing is relevant until he squeezes the trigger on a weapon.

DG: How important is the jury?

Reid: The jury is extremely important. They should be listening carefully. They should be objective as they listen. And very often they’re listening for pieces of evidence that will help them decide.

DG: People aren’t robots, though, and as Antonin Scalia once noted, “Courts and juries are not perfect.” What kinds of life experiences do jurors bring to the courtroom, which could keep them from being objective?

Reid: If the jurors are angry, for example, about people being killed in their community, if they’re fearful of a mass shooting and going to a supermarket or a theater or the mall, then they may lean in a subjective, personal feelings direction rather than an objective one. 

DG: Lawyers say they don’t want emotions to come into a decision … 

Reid: Well, good lawyers pay attention to both factual evidence and what they think jurors are feeling. That’s part of the way lawyers talk in their opening and closing statements and the way they phrase questions to witnesses.

DG: Colorado does not have the death penalty as an option, so the jury is deciding whether the defendant is guilty of these 10 murders, plus other multiple counts, or if he is not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI). If the decision is NGRI, and the defendant is committed to be treated at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo — you’ve been there — what is life like for the patients there? 

Reid: It’s a fairly nice place, in my experience, nicer than prison but still an institution. There’s television; there are nice jobs for patients who qualify for them, access to education and recreation. The staff, often through a committee that considers both security and clinical eligibility, can award different levels of privileges, such as moving around within the building, moving around on the campus and maybe even moving around outside the campus (usually with court approval), but these must be earned over time. CMHI-Pueblo is a hospital, not a prison, but one in which security and public safety go hand-in-hand with treatment.