By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
After almost two months of testimony, the second trial for Jewish Federation gunman Naveed Haq drew to a close on Dec. 10 with attorneys from both the prosecution and defense presenting their closing arguments.
On July 28, 2006, Haq shot six women at the offices of Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, killing one. A longtime sufferer of bi-polar disorder, Haq is pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury is charged with the task of determining not whether Haq was the one who committed the attack — he has never denied his actions — but whether he was mentally competent at the time of the shooting.
The prosecution does not dispute the existence of Haq’s mental illness; however, senior deputy prosecuting attorney Erin Ehlert told the jury Thursday, “The fact that someone is mentally ill is not a defense in itself.”
In particular, she asked them to consider the days’ worth of planning Haq appeared to have undertaken prior to July 28. Ehlert reviewed the steps Haq took to purchase firearms (including filling out paperwork and allowing for the three-day waiting period), conducting Internet research to decide on his target, obtaining maps and directions to the Jewish Federation, and lying to his parents about his reasons for driving from his home in Pasco to Seattle.
“Why does he lie to his parents?” Ehlert asked. “Because he realizes that if he tells the truth, he will be stopped.”
All of these actions, she said, suggest that Haq was fully aware of the nature and quality of the crime he was about to commit, as well as his ability to tell the difference between right and wrong.
Ehlert also replayed taped recordings of several phone conversations Haq had with his mother and other family members from jail in the weeks immediately following his arrest. The tapes were first played for the jury by the prosecution several weeks prior. This time, Ehlert highlighted sections of conversation where Haq’s mother insists that he must have committed the shooting because he is ill. Haq repeatedly tells his mother that he is not sick and that his actions were done purposely.
Defense attorney Christopher Swaby countered that Haq’s actions leading up to the attack as well as his behavior after he was in jail must all be viewed in the context of his mental illness.
“He thinks that he did the right thing — that is, the inability to see right from wrong. and that is why he is not guilty by reason of insanity,” Swaby said in reference to Haq’s statements on the jailhouse tapes.
Swaby recounted the testimony of various therapists and psychiatrists who worked with Haq both before and after the shooting in an attempt to construct a picture of a man who had struggled with bi-polar disorder and psychotic symptoms for his entire adult life, and who had lost control of his illness despite his best efforts to seek help.
Swaby attributed Haq’s decline both to mismanagement of his medication and a change in his insurance coverage that no longer allowed him to see counselors as often as he should.
“The system failed,” Swaby said. “It failed Mr. Haq and then, as a result, it failed the people at the Jewish Federation.”
Haq is charged with eight criminal counts, including one count of aggravated first-degree murder, five counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of unlawful imprisonment, and one count of malicious harassment. When addressing the charges of attempted first-degree murder, Swaby argued that Haq did not go to the Jewish Federation with the intent of killing anyone, but had planned only on taking hostages in order to express his frustration over the war between Israel and Lebanon.
“He didn’t premeditate anyone’s death,” Swaby said.
He also countered the malicious harassment charge, claiming that Haq did not target the Jewish Federation for anti-Semitic reasons.
“There is nothing to indicate that he was responding to their Jewishness,” he said of Haq’s victims.
The prosecution maintains that Haq did in fact go to the Jewish Federation with the intention not only to murder, but to murder Jewish people specifically. During the first weeks of the trial, prosecuting attorneys interviewed forensics specialists at length about the Internet searches Haq had done on Jewish organizations, both nationally and locally, prior to the shooting, as well as the probable rationale behind Haq’s choice of guns and ammunition.
“I should make mention that the type of bullet he bought were hollow point,” senior deputy prosecutor Don Raz said at the trial’s onset. “What is unfortunate about a hollow-point bullet is the devastating injury it can cause because it transfers more of the striking power to the person it hits. He bought these bullets because he wanted to do the most damage possible.”
If the jury decides Haq is not guilty by reason of insanity, he will spend the rest of his life in a state mental facility. If he is found guilty, the state is seeking a sentence of life in prison.