Haq jurors have questions for trial judge, but no verdict yet

On the third day of deliberations, jurors weighing the fate of Jewish Federation shooter Naveed Haq sent two questions to trial Judge Paris Kallas.

Jurors asked the judge in the event they failed to reach a unanimous verdict on count one — aggravated first-degree murder or, alternately, second-degree murder — should they move on to count two, which is the first of five counts of attempted murder.

Kallas agreed with prosecutors, who asked that judge not give an answer. Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Don Raz argued that telling the jurors to move on to count two might give the impression that they have spent enough time considering the first count.

"Given the length of the trial, the complexity of the issues, it would be too early to poll them," said Kallas, referring to the juror questioning undertaken after a jury announces it has either reached an impasse or arrived at a verdict.

Jurors also asked Kallas whether they could consider the 15 counts against Haq in any order they chose. The judge said they could, telling them simply to continue their deliberations in the order they see fit.

The jury has been deliberating since Friday morning.

The jurors are trying to reach an agreement on Haq's mental state — and therefore his guilt or innocence — when he barged into the Belltown offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on July 28, 2006, and shot six employees, killing one.

They are sorting through two very different pictures of Haq painted during the trial: one, by prosecutors, of a frustrated, chronically unemployed and awkward man who decided that "suicide by cop" was the answer the morning he drove from the Tri-Cities area toward the federation with three guns in his pickup and anti-Semitic thoughts playing through his mind.

Haq's defense team portrayed him as a man who suffered through an abusive childhood and increasingly paranoid teenage and college years, loathed his short stature and Muslim heritage and whose body and mind were reeling from a dangerous regimen of prescription medications when he entered a manic state and heard God telling him to go on a mission.

Haq, 32, is charged with one count of aggravated first-degree murder for slaying employee Pamela Waechter; five counts of attempted first-degree murder for shooting five other women; one count of first-degree kidnapping; one count of unlawful imprisonment; one count of first-degree burglary; and six counts of violating the state's hate-crime law. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if found guilty of the murder charge.

Haq has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and if the jury deems him insane, he will be committed to a state mental hospital indefinitely.

Natalie Singer: 206-464-2704 or nsinger@seattletimes.com