NEW YORK – Naveed Haq did a terrible thing. And he admits pulling the trigger again and again. But he says he’s not guilty by reason of insanity.

Jami Floyd has the last word on the insanity defense.

There is a huge chasm between our everyday understanding of crazy and the legal definition of insanity. The legal standard is almost insurmountable.

Ninety percent of those who raise the insanity defense are diagnosed as mentally ill, but the defense works in only 26 percent of cases. The legal test in most states, including Washington state, is just too narrow. I know prosecutors say it needs to be narrow to prevent abuse. Heck, five states have abolished the insanity defense altogether. Watch the latest trial update

Talk about crazy. The prisons are full of people who belong in mental health facilities. It doesn’t serve justice. Instead of intolerance for the mentally ill, we should reform the law of insanity which in many states dates back to the pre colonial period.

Isn’t it time to take into account all that we now know about mental illness that we didn’t know hundreds of years ago? I think it is.

And that’s the Last Word.

– Jami Floyd, In Session anchor

SEATTLE, Washington — The lead detective on the Jewish Center shooting case, David Duty of the Seattle Police Department, testified Tuesday that Naveed Haq’s parents tried to keep weapons out of their son’s hands. They stashed the weapons in a bedroom closet at their home to keep them out of his reach.

Also, said Duty, Haq apparently wrote a khutba — a Muslin sermon — on how attitudes toward mental illness have developed from belief in possession by evil to the recognition of a brain disease.

Haq wrote, “There is no shame in getting help if you need it.”

Judge Paris Kallas also issued a ruling allowing the state to end its case the way prosecutors had hoped — with 911 calls by three women caught in the attack. Carol Goldman, who testified earlier she was likely in shock at the time, sounded remarkably composed as she nursed a leg wound hiding under her desk until SWAT officers arrived.

– In Session staff

SEATTLE, Washington — We heard from the first defense witness today as one of Naveed Haq’s treating physicians took the stand to testify to her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder and the half-dozen medications Haq was on during his time in dental school.

This witness, Dr. Alexandra McLean, had traveled from the East Coast was taken out of order; the prosecution has not yet rested. She testified Haq thought in 1998 that he could read minds but that she couldn’t testify to what his mental state was after the year 2000. Watch her testimony

Haq, a 30-year-old Muslim American, is accused of killing one woman and wounding five others. His state of mind is key to the case because he is mounting an insanity defense.

Cross-examination of prosecution witness Detective Timothy Luckie also gave the defense a chance to score a point or two, as Haq’s online activity was portrayed as an exercise in civil awareness – including available city council seats, global warming, and Project Vote Smart.

Detective Alan Cruise also testified as one of the final prosecution witnesses, adding another layer to the image of Haq’s life before the incident. Jurors saw pictures of an apartment lacking even basic furniture; a pillow on the floor, a lonely movie poster on a wall — and the packaging of a Ruger pistol and Ka-Bar knife Haq eventually would leave at the Jewish Federation offices.

– In Session staff

NEW YORK – All weekend, people have been asking me what I think about the acquittals of those three cops who shot and killed Sean Bell.

Jami Floyd gets the Last Word again.

Most of all, I feel for his parents and fiancée who sat in that courtroom, day after day, quietly hoping for justice. Then they heard the judge say the words “not guilty.”

Now, I know there has been case after sorry case of unjustified killings of black men by cops in this country. But each one has to be evaluated on its own merits. And everyone is presumed innocent, police included.

Even with 50 shots fired, the prosecution failed to make its case beyond a reasonable doubt because it couldn’t prove the cops were not in fear for their lives. And that’s what the law required.

So now, Sean Bell’s family should take it to the Department of Justice. Because federal prosecutors can likely prove his civil rights were violated — even if state prosecutors can’t prove a crime.

And that’s the Last Word.

– Jami Floyd, In Session anchor

NEW YORK – From the moment I arrived at the Queens County Courthouse, I knew tensions were high and emotions were volatile. The verdict was about to be announced in the Sean Bell case. This is the case in which a 23-year-old groom-to-be was shot dead by New York Police detectives November 25, 2006.

Bell was concluding his bachelor party in those early morning hours when 50 shots came from the guns of five police detectives. Three of those detectives had been charged, and two of the three, if convicted, could have been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The officers said those bullets were justified because they reasonably believed that Bell’s friend had a gun and would use it on them.

Now, after a lengthy trial, Judge Arthur Cooperman was to deliver the verdict. He presided at a “bench trial” because the defendant detectives gave up their right to a jury trial and asked for a judge to determine their guilt or innocence.

A few minutes after 9 a.m., people started running out of the courthouse, screaming, “Not guilty!” Hundreds of supporters for Bell and his friends voiced their objections to the verdict through protests that got very loud as I was doing my live shots.

Law enforcement officers circled the courthouse, forming a security base in case emotions ran too high. They did not. Protesters remained peaceful. When Bell’s fiancee and family left the courthouse, supporters followed them as they made their way to Bell’s gravesite.

Once again, we see a family that has lost a son, a fiancee who lost her future husband, police officers who said they reasonably believed that they were in danger themselves and a very experienced judge who looked at the facts and the law to render his verdict.

– Jean Casarez, In Session correspondent

NEW YORK – It’s cases like this one that makes me glad to be a lawyer because, whatever the emotions of the Sean Bell trial, as lawyers we look at the evidence and only the evidence.

Jami Floyd has the last word on Sean Bell.

Of course, sympathies and emotions have run high ever since Sean Bell was killed after his bachelor party and on the morning of his wedding. To many police officers, the accused cops have been made scapegoats merely to placate an angry public. That’s not the case. Nor is it the case that the detectives are cold-blooded killers.

No, the only question in this case was whether they were criminally reckless in firing on Bell and his friends — beyond a reasonable doubt. And the fact that the cops fired 50 times is not itself grounds for conviction. It’s just part of what the judge had to consider.

In the end, Judge Arthur Cooperman’s duty was not to second-guess the cops, not to place the victim on trial. His job was to subject all the testimony to the intense scrutiny justice requires. To ascertain what really happened and why. And then, to apply the law. And that’s what he did, like it or not.

That’s the Last Word.

– Jami Floyd, In Session anchor

NEW YORK – Here’s the thing about jury verdicts: they almost always result in disagreement. That’s because, by definition, a case only goes to trial because the parties can’t agree on how it should be resolved.

So we certainly shouldn’t be surprised that, even after the trial is concluded, the parties, and their supporters, still disagree. Sometimes that disagreement takes the form of a philosophical divide over the more profound legal issues in a trial. Other times that disagreement can take the form of a deeply felt anger over the verdict and an overwhelming frustration with what they perceive to be the failure of the justice system.

This was the case in the reaction of Sean Bell’s family and friends to the “not guilty” verdicts in the trial of the police officers charged in Bell’s death. Watch some express outrage

But it’s important to remember, whatever you may feel about this verdict, that “not guilty” doesn’t mean that the system failed. Rather, it simply means that after both sides argued their cases, a judge determined that the prosecution had not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Read more

And it is also essential that we remember that we can always disagree vehemently with the result in a courtroom, but we shouldn’t automatically assume that a difference of opinion justifies an indictment of the integrity of the justice system that rendered that verdict.

The debate over this case will continue. And it is a testament to the family and friends of Sean Bell that they have encouraged all of their supporters to express their discontent in a peaceful fashion.

As a final note, it is unfortunate that the New York court system has continued to refuse to allow cameras into their courtrooms. This is a case where the public would have benefited enormously from the opportunity to witness this case and assess the arguments of both sides firsthand. Watching and listening could only enhance an understanding of the verdict and better inform the debate that will, and should, follow.

– Jack Ford, In Session anchor

Seattle, Washington – Jewish Federation employee Molly Bennett was called by prosecutors because she found a bullet casing in a candy dish on her desk some time after the shooting.

But the real points made with this witness came on cross-examination, when she testified there was a certain apathy about the attacker, that he did not seem to care what happened, and also did not make any specifically anti-Semitic comments.

A computer expert told jurors about a series of Google searches conducted on the defendant’s computer. Five days before the shooting, Naveed Haq seemed fascinated by research on statistical differences between Jewish and Arab people; among his search terms were “arab americans in congress,” and “number of jews in israel.”

The evening before the Jewish Federation attack, his focus had shifted, and his searches narrowed eerily during 16 minutes from a general search for Jewish organizations and events, to “current jewish federation events” – and, eventually, the Mapquest directions to the federation’s Seattle offices.

– In Session staff

NEW YORK – The verdict in the Sean Bell case is due Friday morning. How do we know exactly when the verdict is coming down? Well, that’s just one of the many intriguing aspects of this case.

Sean Bell was the 23-year-old man who was shot and killed by police outside a New York nightclub just hours before he was to be married. The defendants — three police detectives — are charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment as a result of the shooting death.  Read more

We know the precise time the verdict will be returned because the defendants chose to waive a jury trial and place their fate in the hands of a judge. That’s certainly a unique approach to a criminal defense, but in this case the attorneys and their clients apparently felt a judge might be less influenced than jurors by the emotions of the case.

Their defense is that the detectives were following up on suspicions concerning drug deals and weapons when they encountered Bell and his friends. Two of Bell’s friends were wounded in the shooting and none of them was armed, the investigation later disclosed.

At this point, the stories diverge dramatically. The prosecution says the police opened fire with no provocation, while the defense says the victims refused to respond to commands to exit their car and, in fact, attempted to run the police over.

Judge Arthur Cooperman, a veteran trial judge, heard the testimony and has said he will announce his decision Friday. It’s an unenviable position for any jurist, given the combustible reactions the city has witnessed in past alleged police brutality cases.

Certainly, the fact that two of the detectives are men of color, as was Sean Bell, will hopefully tend to mitigate any allegations of racism in the shooting.

In any event, justice in this case will be offered solely through the findings of one man, rather than 12 members of the community. The city hopes that, whatever is determined by that one man, the legacy of the Sean Bell case will not involve more violence.

– Jack Ford, In Session anchor

SEATTLE, Washington – At the Jewish Center shooting trial, Detective Don Ledbetter has finally left the stand after wrapping up his series of daily stints on the stand by discussing the number of bullets and their respective trajectories – indicating, it seems, that the shots – “at least nine” — were fired in a deliberate manner.

SWAT officers also told jurors about their slow clearing of the offices, and encountering bleeding, terrified victims. One officer, who escorted 14-year-old Kelsie Burkum out of the center, said he was near the stairs with Burkum when he realized, “Oh my god, I’m going to take her right by her friend who is deceased.” Watch SWAT officer describe finding victims

The officer clasped Burkum’s hand and told the girl to close her eyes and “feel my body, move down with me,” as he led her around the corpse as quickly as he could – not knowing whether shooters still roamed the floor.

Defendant Naveed Haq, a 30-year-old Muslim American, is accused of killing one woman and wounding five others. He is mounting an insanity defense.

– In Session staff