Jury finds Sapry guilty of first-degree murder, rejects insanity defense

LACONIA — A jury found Hassan Sapry guilty on all counts Wednesday afternoon in the 2019 killing of Wilfred Guzman Sr.

It took 12 jurors just short of five hours to convict Sapry, 27, on seven charges, including first-degree murder, for Guzman Sr.'s slaying in his Blueberry Lane apartment. 

Sapry invoked the not guilty by reason of insanity defense, and arguments presented by his defense team apparently did not sway the jury, which convicted him unanimously on all counts, and did not find he had proven the affirmative defense on any.

“Emotionally relieved,” Wilfred Guzman Jr. said he was feeling after the guilty verdict was handed down. “I am very happy that 12 jurors are able to see that what Hassan Sapry did to my father was planned out, premeditated, and we all saw it through the years. And I know my father’s happy too — that’s justice for him.”

Sapry was arrested by a coalition of law enforcement agencies at his family’s home on Pleasant Street on April 26, 2019, a week after police found Guzman Sr., then 58, dead on his apartment kitchen floor.

After driving to Guzman Sr.’s home around 10:30 p.m. on April 18, 2019, Sapry and Guzman Sr. — who Sapry saw as a close friend and mentor — watched television and discussed history for about two hours, before Sapry initiated a brutal attack, struggling with Guzman Sr. for 10-12 minutes. 

Sapry used knives, a fork and a samurai sword, among other innocuous kitchen and household items, to kill Guzman Sr., inflicting over 140 injuries. Guzman Sr. died of blunt- and sharp-force trauma.

In the days following the killing, Sapry drove to hospitals in New London and Lebanon to seek treatment for serious hand injuries he sustained. Upon returning from Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, he noticed increased law enforcement presence in the area, and broke into a home on Edgewater Avenue, not far from his home on Pleasant Street. 

He remained there until the day he was captured, when he returned to his house and surrendered to State Police SWAT.

Sapry, whose family came to the Laconia from Baghdad, Iraq, by way of Syria in 2008, suffered severely as a result of war and intense insurgencies there as a child. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression by independent psychological experts. 

In the months leading up to the killing of Guzman Sr., Sapry told investigators he’d experienced daily thoughts and nightly dreams about killing people, and those thoughts escalated to the point of being unbearable in the days before the murder.

In New Hampshire, an individual asserting the affirmative not guilty by reason of insanity defense must prove, by a standard of clear and convincing evidence, that they suffered from a mental disorder or defect at the time they committed an alleged crime, and that their actions were a result of suffering the same. 

But a Belknap County jury Wednesday did not believe Sapry and his defense, provided by attorneys Mark Sisti and Amy Ashworth of Sisti Law Offices, met the standard to prove he was insane when he killed Guzman Sr. 

A sentencing hearing has not yet been set.

Members of the public, several of whom were either relatives or friends of Guzman Sr., waited with baited breath as jurors entered the room following nearly a full day of deliberations.

Guzman Jr. shed tears of relief following the reading of the verdict, hugging state prosecutors Jeffery Strelzin and Alexander Kellermann outside the courtroom in Belknap County Superior Court downtown.

For Guzman Jr. and his family, the jury’s verdict provides answers after a six-year period filled with questions and uncertainty.

“It was six years, waiting for this moment, but I waited patiently and I never gave up. Thank God that jurors are able to see the way I see it, that he planned this out, it was his plan to murder my father,” Guzman Jr. said. “My father was very loving, he loved all of his kids, his grandkids. He had no hate in him, he loved everybody — even Hassan, over the years he took him in like he was his son. I’m glad justice was done today.”  

Jurors began their deliberations late in the afternoon on Tuesday and continued at 10 a.m. Wednesday, working through lunch until reaching a verdict just before 2:30 p.m. At 2:57 p.m., both parties to the case were back in the courtroom and jurors reentered, rendering their verdict as a group at first, and then individually, after Sapry moved to poll them.

Their answers were consistent: guilty on all counts, and Sapry did not prove his defense.

There were seven court officers in the courtroom when the jury gave the verdict, four more than stood guard during a typical day in the three-weeks of proceedings. When the jury was excused, officers handcuffed Sapry and led him out of the courtroom, presumably to a holding cell in the basement of the courthouse.

“Today’s verdict holds Mr. Sapry accountable for his actions and brings justice for Wilfred Guzman Sr. and Mr. Guzman’s loved ones,” Attorney General John Formella wrote in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “I want to thank our trial team for their tireless work and the jurors for their service. We hope this outcome provides some measure of closure and reassurance to the families and community members who have been impacted by this tragedy.”