A mentally ill man who killed 10 people at a Colorado supermarket in 2021 was sentenced Monday to life in prison for murder after a jury rejected his attempt to avoid prison time by pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

Victims’ relatives recounted in pained testimony the lives gunman Ahmad Alissa destroyed in the 2021 attack in the college town of Boulder.

“To the person that’s done this, we hope that you suffer for the rest of your life. You are a coward,” said Nikolena Stanisic, whose only sibling, Neven, was killed. “I hope this haunts the defendant until the end of time. The defendant deserves the absolute worst.”

Defense attorneys did not dispute that Alissa, who has schizophrenia, fatally shot 10 people including a police officer. But the defense argued he was insane at the time of the attack and couldn’t tell right from wrong.

In addition to 10 counts of first-degree murder, the jury found Alissa guilty on 38 charges of attempted murder, one count of assault, and six counts of possessing illegal, large-capacity magazines.

Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced him to 10 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for murder and an additional 1,334 years in prison for the other offenses.

“This was not about mental illness. This was about brutal, intentional violence,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.

Alissa and his attorneys declined an opportunity to speak during his sentencing.

N.C.’s Robinson seeks to regroup campaign

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson vowed Monday to rebuild his campaign staff after several top aides quit and a key Republican group backed away from his race following a CNN report alleging he made explicit racial and sexual posts years ago on a pornography website’s message board.

Robinson, the sitting lieutenant governor, revealed Sunday that his campaign’s senior adviser, campaign manager and two other top staffers had stepped down. The senior adviser said separately that four other top aides also had quit.

And the Republican Governors Association — anticipated to keep running ads to boost Robinson’s bid into the fall and oppose Democratic rival Josh Stein — will no longer support Robinson, association Chair and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee told reporters Monday.

Recent polls have shown Stein, the current attorney general, ahead of Robinson. Stein also has outspent Robinson on the airwaves.

Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor if elected, has denied writing the messages from more than a decade ago, well before he became active in politics, calling them “salacious tabloid lies.” Fellow Republican leaders are suggesting Robinson, with a long history of inflammatory comments, must make a credible defense, or his gubernatorial bid is washed up.

Ky. seats first-ever female chief justice

For the first time, Kentucky’s Supreme Court will have a woman at its helm, after justices on Monday selected Debra Hembree Lambert to serve as the next chief justice.

Lambert, who is currently the deputy chief justice, will serve a four-year term at the top of the judicial system beginning Jan. 6, court officials announced.

She will succeed Laurance B. VanMeter as chief justice. VanMeter opted not to seek reelection this year.

The state Supreme Court has four men and three women as justices.

Missouri man loses final state execution appeal

A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection.

Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, on rejected Williams’ clemency request to spare him from the death penalty and instead sentence him to life in prison. The Missouri Supreme Court, almost simultaneously, also rejected a request to cancel the execution so that a lower court could make a new determination about whether a trial prosecutor wrongly excluded a potential Black juror for racial reasons.

Attorneys for Williams still have an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hurricane John threatens Mexico

Hurricane John ripped toward Mexico’s southern coast on Monday after rapidly intensifying over the eastern Pacific Ocean, surprising authorities who called for residents of some coastal areas to head for cover.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said John had “rapidly strengthened” into a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. The storm was extremely close to the coast — about 15 miles south of Punta Maldonado and it was moving north at 8 mph.

John was set to touch land late Monday night, according to forecasters and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“Seek higher ground, protect yourselves and do not forget that life is the most important thing; material things can be replaced. We are here,” wrote López Obrador on a post on the social media platform X.

Forecasters projected John would hit the beachside town of Punta Maldonado head on, and also likely batter nearby tourist hubs Acapulco and Puerto Escondido before turning into a tropical storm while makes it way inland.

— From news services