A prosecutor declared Monday that two mental health evaluations found Colorado theatre gunman James Holmes to be sane. It was the first public word on what different psychiatrists determined after examining the former neuroscience student accused of killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a midnight "Batman" premiere.
The statement by District Attorney George Brauchler marked the start of a long-awaited, lengthy and emotionally wrenching trial to determine if he'll be executed, spend his life in prison, or be committed to an institution as criminally insane.
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Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to 166 counts, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and an explosives offence, after the mayhem he caused in suburban Denver on July 20, 2012. It remains one of America's deadliest shootings, and that Holmes was the lone gunman has never been in doubt. He was arrested at the scene, along with an arsenal of weapons on his body and in his car.
If jurors decide James Holmes was insane when he opened fire inside a Colorado theatre, killing 12 people and wounding 70, he will be committed indefinitely to a state psychiatric hospital. (Andy Cross/Denver Post/The Associated Press)
His fate depends on whether a jury agrees that he was unable to know right from wrong because of a mental illness or defect three years ago, when he slipped into the midnight Batman premiere, unleashed tear gas and marched up and down the aisles, firing at people who tried to flee.
"Through this door is horror. Through this door are bullets, blood, brains and bodies. Through this door, one guy who thought as if he had lost his career, lost his love life, lost his purpose, came to execute a plan," said Brauchler, standing before what appeared to be a scale model of the theatre, still covered in a black cloth.
"Four-hundred people came into a boxlike theatre to be entertained, and one person came to slaughter them," the prosecutor said.
Shooting was part of psychotic episode: defence
Each side was allowed two hours for opening statements, with public defenders Daniel King and Katherine Spengler following his presentation.
Defence lawyers say Holmes was in the grips of a psychotic episode and could not tell right from wrong when he went on the rampage. His parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes, in pleading for his life, have called their son a "human being gripped by a severe mental illness."
He tried to murder a theatre full of people to make himself feel better and because he thought it would increase his self-worth.- Source
Under Colorado law, the burden falls on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was "not insane," Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. told the jury. And that, in turn, depends in part on "a culpable state of mind:" If Holmes acted with deliberation and intent — wilfully taking actions that he knew would kill people — then even if he had mental problems, he should be found guilty of murder, the judge said.
Prosecutors allege that Holmes planned the violence for months, buying a rifle, a shotgun, two pistols, tear gas canisters, body armour, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a chemical stockpile that turned his 800-square-foot apartment into a booby trap that might have caused a conflagration.
"He tried to murder a theatre full of people to make himself feel better and because he thought it would increase his self-worth," Brauchler said. "I would like to focus on the victims."
Few insanity defences succeed
The state has already spent millions of dollars seeking a guilty verdict, managing an outsized number of victims, witnesses and more than 85,000 pages of evidence.Over nearly three years, hundreds of motions were filed in legal debates over capital punishment and insanity pleas.
Insanity defences are successful in only 25 per cent of felony trials nationally, even less so in homicides.
Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. warned jurors on Monday that the onus is on the prosecution to convince them that Holmes was not insane when he carried out the shooting. (Andy Cross/The Denver Post/Associated Press)
"Lay people tend to think of people with mental illness as extremely dangerous, and that also influences jurors, especially if someone has killed someone," said Christopher Slobogin, who teaches law and psychiatry at Vanderbilt Law School. "Usually there's evidence of intent and planning that seems to be counterintuitive to the lay view of mental illness."
Winning a trial on mental-health grounds is rare, but then again, so are jury trials for mass shooters. Most are killed by police, kill themselves or plead guilty.
A review of 160 mass shootings found killers went to trial 74 times, and just three were found insane, according to Grant Duwe, a Minnesota corrections official who wrote the book "Mass Murder in the United States: A History."
Just one has won a mental-health case in the last two decades, Duwe said: Michael Hayes, who shot nine people, killing four, in North Carolina in 1988. Based on that, Holmes "faces some pretty long odds," he said.
Trial could take at least 4 months
Brauchler began laying out how the once-promising doctoral candidate in neuroscience plotted and planned for months, amassing guns, ammunition, tear gas grenades and enough chemicals to turn his dingy apartment into a potentially lethal booby trap that could have caused even more carnage.
Holmes was arrested almost immediately, while stripping off his body armour in the parking lot outside the Century 16 movie theatre where he replaced Hollywood violence with real human carnage. His victims included two active-duty servicemen, a single mom, a man celebrating his 27th birthday, and an aspiring broadcaster who had survived a mall shooting in Toronto. Several died shielding friends or loved ones.
At six years old, the youngest to die was Veronica Moser-Sullivan. Her mother, Ashley Moser, was left paralyzed and lost her unborn child.
Holmes's trial could take at least four months or more and is sure to be emotionally wrenching. The 12 jurors and 12 alternates — chosen from a pool of 9,000 because it was so difficult to find people who weren't personally affected — won't know if they'll join the deliberations until after the trial.
Some survivors want Holmes executed, even if that means reliving horrific details.
"It still doesn't bring him back, but we want justice," said W. David Hoover, who wants to avenge the death of his 18-year-old nephew, A.J. Boik. "Real justice is going to happen when this animal leaves this Earth."
Fire Chief Larry Trujillo, whose daughter, Taylor, survived the shooting when a friend threw her to the floor, said while entering the courthouse that his faith enables him to forgive, but that this may be easier to say for him than others: H\his daughter survived.
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