Samour spoke after Kathleen Pourciau testified that her daughter, Bonnie Kate Pourciau, suffers constant, excruciating pain and awful nightmares from the gunshot wounds she suffered at Holmes’ hand.
Advertisement
Judge Carlos Samour is hearing from victims before formally sentencing Holmes to life, along with separate sentences for the injuries he caused, and for booby-trapping his apartment with explosives and incendiaries intended to divert first-responders away from the theater as he attacked.
Jurors already determined that Holmes will spend the rest of his life in prison without parole for the attack that also wounded 70 others.
Police testimony during the trial showed Holmes purchased a ticket to the midnight screening of the movie and sat in the front row. He said he did not have expectations for Monday’s sentencing hearing.
Brooke Cowden described “drowning in pain and sadness”.
Ahead of the sentencing, those who were impacted by Holmes’ crimes gave their emotional statements to the court Monday.
As a result Holmes was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Asked by Samour what he meant, Sullivan said the holdout juror had “a moral goal , and that is to save this one from the death sentence”, he said, pointing at Holmes at the defense table. Now that he has been convicted, he is not permitted to wear regular clothes.
Witnesses testifying Monday included Aurora Police Cmdr.
A jury last month found Holmes, a 27-year-old former neuroscience graduate student from California, guilty of the July, 2012, massacre in a suburban theater during a showing of the Batman film “The Dark Night Rises”.
State corrections officials will determine where Holmes will be incarcerated after an evaluation that includes his mental health. She said she couldn’t speculate on what kind of prison routine Holmes or any inmate would have.
Colorado theater shooter James Holmes looks like a prisoner again.
The department has four levels of security for inmates, and those serving a life sentence, like Holmes, are usually classified at the highest or second-highest security level, Jacobson said.
“With Veronica’s photo displayed on the courtroom wall, Sullivan said, “I think of her soft brown eyes, so innocent, so sensitive, as if kissed by the summer’s warm rays”.
Advertisement
During his four-month trial, two court-appointed psychiatrists testified for the prosecution that while the defendant was severely mentally ill, he was sane when he plotted and carried out the massacre.
