Five years after Nahom Berhane, a beloved community leader who hoped to one day become Toronto’s first Black mayor, was stabbed to death on the Danforth, his killer’s case remains before the courts. It’s an unusual case that shows the complexity of prosecuting a person with a serious mental illness.

Since his arrest on Sept. 27, 2014, Osama Filli, 28, has been held in segregation and hospitalized from jail many times, has twice been found unfit to stand trial and ordered into treatment until deemed fit to do so, and has undergone several mental health assessments.

By the time of his trial in early 2017, a team of doctors had not yet settled on a diagnosis or on whether he was not criminally responsible for killing Berhane, 34.

Filli, himself, declared that he was not mentally ill and testified that he acted in self-defence.

Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell dismissed Filli’s claim he acted in self-defence during an intoxicated fight with Berhane, who had no weapon. However, she found that Filli didn’t intend to kill Berhane, but meant only to wound him when he stabbed Berhane twice in the back as Berhane turned to leave the fight. She acquitted Filli of second-degree murder, but found him guilty of manslaughter.

He then underwent more mental health assessments.

Two years later, Filli is seeking to be found not criminally responsible for killing Berhane.

In a court hearing this week, two forensic psychiatrists, one called by the defence and one called by the Crown, both testified Filli has schizoaffective disorder. He was likely in a psychotic state before and at the time he stabbed Berhane, making him unable to know what he was doing was wrong, they said.

According to the most recent psychiatric assessment, ordered by the Crown, Dr. Ian Swayze found that Filli was intoxicated on marijuana and alcohol in addition to being in a paranoid delusional psychosis when he killed Berhane “on the basis of a delusional misinterpretation that his life was at imminent risk.”

However, Swayze also noted this is “by no means a clear cut assessment” and that he has never seen a case in his long career where a person found not criminally responsible has also explicitly said: “I know what I’m doing, I’m responsible.” Swayze attributed this to Filli’s inability to understand that he has a serious mental illness, a misapprehension that is not uncommon.

Crown prosecutor Matthew Giovinazzo conceded during closing arguments that there is a path to a finding of not criminally responsible based on the testimony of the two psychiatrists. But, he argued, the “depth and breadth” of inconsistencies in Filli’s various accounts of what happened requires careful consideration by the court in order to determine if he truly did not have the capacity to know what he was doing was wrong.

Filli’s lawyer Erin Dann argued that a verdict that finds Filli is not criminally responsible is appropriate, and that Filli’s inconsistent accounts of what happened are based on his desire, at the time of the trial, to avoid such a finding and present himself as mentally well and acting rationally. “This is a symptom of his mental illness, not evidence he was not delusional,” she said.

Schizoaffective disorder is a chronic mental illness that involves a display of psychotic symptoms, such as delusions, and a “major mood episode,” such as depression, but a person suffering from it often goes through periods of stability, which may have been part of the reason it took so long for Filli to be diagnosed.

For an unknown reason, symptoms may disappear after a psychotic episode and leave the person appearing stable, as Filli seemed in an interview with police after his arrest, Dr. Lisa Ramshaw testified.

A finding of not criminally responsible means that Filli would be sent to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely, not sentenced to a finite term in prison. His release would be governed by the Ontario Review Board and depend on the risk Filli is deemed to pose to public safety.

Two psychiatric reports, made court exhibits at a court hearing this month, document Filli’s tortuous journey through the criminal justice and mental health systems.

After his arrest, Filli was sent to the Toronto South Detention Centre, where he was put on anti-psychotic medication and placed in segregation. He was hospitalized due to severe psychosis and aggression in April 2016 and returned to the jail in August 2016.

In October 2016, Filli was found unfit to stand trial and ordered into treatment.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

A defence-ordered psychiatric assessment by Dr. Lisa Ramshaw from October 2016 found Filli could have been not criminally responsible for killing Berhane due to active psychosis stemming from schizoaffective disorder before and during the stabbing.

She found that, based on accounts from those who interacted with him, including staff at various shelters and clinics, Filli’s mental state deteriorated in early 2014. He started to express paranoid beliefs, began carrying a knife, was evicted from two shelters and became homeless. Two weeks prior to the stabbing, he went to a clinic and asked for an anti-psychotic medication. He also showed sexually inappropriate and bizarre behaviour towards clinic and YCMA staff. After his arrest, he repeatedly said he did not know Berhane was dead and maintained that he did not intend to kill him.

In 2017, Filli refused to cooperate with another criminal responsibility assessment, ordered by the Crown. By April 2017, the team of doctors concluded they could not confidently offer an opinion on his diagnosis — he’d received several diagnoses, including those of unspecified psychotic disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder — or as to whether he was not criminally responsible for killing Berhane. There was concern he was faking his symptoms, but no testing was done to find out.

Filli was convicted of manslaughter in May 2017, after a trial.

In June 2017, the psychiatrist who had been treating Filli at the Toronto South Detention Centre, recommended that he be assessed for criminal responsibility having observed him “both mentally well and unwell.”

In September 2017, Filli was again found unfit to stand trial and ordered into treatment at a psychiatric facility.

In February 2018, the court ordered another assessment of Filli’s criminal responsibility, and, again, it was found that there was a “deficit of information to provide an opinion.”

In April 2019, Filli was assessed for criminal responsibility by Dr. Ian Swayze who diagnosed him with schizoaffective disorder. Swayze noted that Filli had, by 2019, accepted his diagnosis and need for treatment. He is not now experiencing active symptoms of psychosis and psychological testing does not show evidence that he is faking symptoms.

A decision in the case is expected in October, the week after the five-year anniversary of Berhane’s death.

The community advocate, who was born in Eritrea and moved to Canada at the age of 10, had two daughters. He worked as a health promoter at Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services. In an apparent coincidence Filli was briefly a patient at an Access Alliance clinic.

A scholarship in Berhane’s name has been set up to assist youth pursuing post-secondary education.

“Everybody’s here because he’s touched every single life — stranger, family or friend — it doesn’t even matter … newcomers,” Berhane’s sister Arsema Berhane said at his funeral, attended by thousands. “He died on the street where he served.”