PITTSBURGH (AP) — A jury found Richard Baumhammers guilty of murder and hate crimes, rejecting arguments that he was too delusional to know what he was doing when he killed five and paralyzed another in a 90-minute shooting spree.
Jurors were to hear from relatives of the victims Thursday before considering whether the unemployed immigration attorney should spend the rest of his life in prison or be sentenced to death.
Baumhammers' attorney and prosecutors declined to comment after the verdict, citing a gag order. But the victims' relatives were outspoken, many of them saying they want the punishment to be severe.
"The crime was so heinous. My feeling is that the penalty should be heinous as well," Sanford Gordon, whose wife was Baumhammers' first victim, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Baumhammers, who is white, shot his Jewish neighbor, two men from India, two Asian men and a black man as he drove through the suburbs of Pittsburgh, stopping twice to vandalize synagogues.
During the trial, his attorney didn't dispute Baumhammers' role in the shootings but argued that the 35-year-old's long history of mental illness and delusions diminished his ability to tell right from wrong.
Psychiatrists testified that Baumhammers believed the FBI and CIA were following him, that the family maid was a spy and that his skin was peeling off.
However, prosecutor Edward Borkowski told the jury that Baumhammers showed he knew what he was doing by the "controlled, deliberate, calculating and selective" way he picked his victims and then eluded police for over an hour.
Witnesses said Baumhammers appeared calm as he shot at people in an Indian grocery store, a Chinese restaurant and a karate studio.
"After things don't work out, he hides behind, 'I'm not well,"' the prosecutor said. "You can't do that. That is not legal insanity."
The jury deliberated three hours before finding Baumhammers guilty of five counts of murder and eight counts of ethnic intimidation, Pennsylvania's equivalent of a hate crime.
Baumhammers displayed no emotion as the verdicts were read. His father, Andrejs Baumhammers, said later that he would not comment on the verdicts.
"I feel relief," said Kathy Yee, owner of the Chinese restaurant where two men were killed.
The sister of the only surviving victim, Sandip Patel, said she hoped her brother's attacker would pay — but not with the death penalty.
"That's what he wants. He wants the death penalty," Leena Patel told the Post-Gazette. "At least he should suffer what my brother is suffering."
Sandip Patel was paralyzed from the neck down after a bullet fired by Baumhammers severed his spinal cord.