It took a San Diego County jury about five minutes to find that an Iraq war veteran was legally sane when he killed a stranger in 2017, rejecting his testimony that he believed that a secret agency had injected nanobots into his brain and compelled him to target the victim.
Mikhail Schmidt, 33, faces the potential of life in prison without parole when he is sentenced next month. The former Marine was living in Oceanside at the time of the killing.
Last week, a jury found Schmidt guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Jacob Bravo, a stranger that Schmidt spotted, followed and later attacked in March 2017. The jury also found true a special circumstance allegation that Schmidt had been lying in wait.
Schmidt had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, meaning, in part, that he was unable to understand at the time of the act that what he was doing was morally and legally wrong.
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