Jurors declined to rule out the death penalty Monday as they now move toward sentencing Holmes. According to Fox News, one forensic psychiatrist did report that James Holmes was genetically likely to suffer from mental illness, due to the fact that his father and twin sister had both been hospitalized for it. “At least not until the event”, Robert Holmes said, referring to the theater attack.
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The same jury last month convicted Holmes of killing 12 people and injuring 70 in the July 2012 attack at a suburban Denver movie theatre, rejecting the defence claim that mental illness had so affected his mind that he could not tell right from wrong.
During the trial, he used the cane he walks with since the shooting as a prop to show how Holmes used an assault rifle to spray gunfire into the crowd.
Samour carefully leafed through the papers the jury foreman handed over, and tension built in the courtroom as people waited to hear if Holmes would be spared the death penalty.
If just one member of the panel had found that they did, the former neuroscience graduate student would have received a life sentence with no possibility of parole.
Robert and Arlene Holmes testified that they never suspected their son was mentally ill.
Robert Holmes: “Yes he is…”
Once jurors decided whether there were reasons to be merciful, they had to weigh mitigation against the aggravating factors that made the crime so heinous.
Although they deliberated as a group, the jurors’ job was to decide individually if they believed that factors existed “in which fairness or mercy may be considered as extenuating or reducing the degree of the defendant’s moral culpability”, Samour explained.
“They’re making the ultimate decision of life or death, quite literally”, Denver defense attorney Dan Recht said.
Prosecutors expect to call 15 victims of the cinema attack to testify in court.
Jurors voted the 27-year-old’s lawyers had not presented a strong enough case to eliminate execution. “We sit next to him”, Sullivan said, his voice wavering with emotion. “I understand he has a serious mental illness”.
The jury took less than three hours Monday to weigh mitigating factors that Holmes’ defense put forward.
The second phase of the sentencing hearing was the best hope the defense had to avoid a death penalty for the shooter.
The verdict will be read at 12:30 p.m. today.
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Following final arguments, the jury will render a decision on Holmes’ fate, which includes life in prison or death by lethal injection.
