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The man who carried out the van attack in Toronto, which killed 10 people and injured 16, was found guilty on all 26 counts. A timetable for sentencing comes on March 18.
Judge Anne Molloy, who asked journalists not to publish the name of the perpetrator, delivered the ruling on Wednesday.
Molloy said much depended on whether the perpetrator knew the crime was morally wrong rather than legally wrong. This would mean that he had no rational perception and thus no rational choice, because he was unable to rationally evaluate what he was doing.
Molloy said it was clear to her that he knew the actions “would be seen as morally wrong by the vast majority of society.”
Molloy said she felt the defense had not proved the perpetrator did not know his crimes were morally wrong.
“He knew it was legally wrong to kill people, he also knew that his plan to flee and kill people amounted to premeditated murder … That’s why Mr. Doe attempted an attempted death by a cop,” said Molloy.
The perpetrator had already admitted to renting a van in April 2018 and driving it on the sidewalk in North York, deliberately beating civilians and killing mostly women. The shocking incident was categorized by many as an “incel” terrorist attack.
Incels, a combination of ‘involuntary celibate’, typically describes a young man who cannot sexually attract women.
Molloy also said the perpetrator had rented the van more than three weeks prior to the attack and was deliberately looking for a van large enough to cause the maximum damage but small enough to maneuver on sidewalks and make sharp turns.
The perpetrator’s lawyers argued that his autism made it impossible for him to acknowledge the seriousness of his actions, something that Molloy said failed to achieve.
It is the first major case in which an autism spectrum disorder has been used in an attempt to find someone who is not criminally responsible for a murder in Canada, CTV said.
The Canadian Criminal Code says that not being criminally responsible means that one “is unable to appreciate the nature and quality of the act or the failure to act or to know that it was wrong”.