VANCOUVER - The lawyer for the man accused of an attack at a Vancouver Chinatown festival says his client had no motivation other than a direction from God to stab three people and he should be found not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.

Glen Orris told a B.C. Supreme Court judge in closing arguments that Blair Donnelly's mental illnesses "rendered him incapable of knowing if his actions were wrong" on Sept. 10, 2023, when two women and a man were injured at the festival.

But Crown counsel Mark Myhre disagreed that Donnelly met the legal threshold to be found not criminally responsible.

"You're only getting to not criminally responsible if your delusions, your psychotic state, renders you incapable of knowing that society thinks what you're doing is wrong," he said.

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