State: Capital Gazette shooting suspect is sane

A forensic psychiatrist for the Maryland Health Department believes the man charged with killing five Capital Gazette staffers is legally sane, an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge said Monday before denying prosecutors’ request to have the man examined again.

The 124-page report was completed at least a month ago after the doctor extensively evaluated the man charged with murdering Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters on June 28, 2018. The report includes includes a 22-page narrative of the attack that defendant Jarrod Ramos gave during interviews with the health examiners.

Prosecutors filed a motion asking a judge to let their own mental health expert examine Ramos, the 39-year-old Laurel man facing five counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, six counts of first-degree assault, among a host of other charges. He has pleaded not guilty and not criminally responsible — Maryland’s version of the insanity defense — to all counts, and is scheduled for trial on Nov. 4.

While discussing the request during Monday’s pretrial hearing in Annapolis, Judge Laura Ripken revealed that the Health Department evaluation found that Ramos was legally sane. Neither attorneys

for the prosecution nor the defense disputed her description.

Ripken cited the Health Department report, which “came back favorable to the state’s position,” in ruling that prosecutors could not have their own experts evaluate Ramos’ mental state. If the Health Department doctors had offered an opinion that he was insane, Ripken said she would have been more inclined to allow a third examination.

Ripken said if she were to approve another examination the defense could ask to delay the trial to review the new findings.

“I see almost no way this would not cause a postponement," she said.

The trial has been split into two phases at Ramos’ request. If Ramos is found guilty of the deadly attack, a second phase of the trial will determine whether he is criminally responsible.

With just two weeks remaining before trial, State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess argued that Ripken should allow the psychiatrist and psychologist hired by her office to evaluate him. When prosecutors made the same request in May, Ripken denied their request.

At a hearing Monday, Public Defender William Davis said the defense experts relied upon the same resources as the Health

Department and spent similar amounts of time evaluating Ramos, Davis said.

“They reached a different conclusion, that’s all,” he said.

It’s unclear how Ramos’ attorneys plan to employ their doctors’ findings, as a diagnosis alone does not meet Maryland’s legal standard for insanity — which says defendants must prove that at the time they committed the crime they could not understand their actions were wrong or stop themselves because of a mental disease or defect.

Ripken denied prosecutors’ request to review the experts’ notes from their interviews with Ramos that may have shed more light on how they arrived at their conclusions. Now, prosecutors will rely on crossexamination to pick apart their findings.

Though Ramos has talked about what the public defenders refer to as “the incident” with Health Department and defense-hired doctors, Davis said Ramos maintains his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights not to incriminate himself. If Ripken were to grant prosecutors access, she’d jeopardize those rights, Davis argued.

In August, Ripken distributed the Health Department’s report to attorneys for both sides and, without objection, ordered that the pivotal record be sealed from public view.

The Capital Gazette is owned by Baltimore Sun Media.