Prosecutors expect to call perhaps 40 witnesses, many of them victims and survivors, to describe their suffering and loss.
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The jury said that when Holmes opened fire in a crowded theater in 2012, he acted in “extreme indifference to the value of human life generally”.
During the trial, prosecutors played numerous hours of video recorded interviews that a court-appointed psychiatrist conducted with Holmes.
“He was just kind of a shadow figure”, the coach, Lori Godwin, said.
“I think what we are looking at is the times we are in”, Slotnick said. Today’s finding comletes the first section of the penalty phase, focusing on aggravating factors.
Jurors have the final say on Holmes’ sentence, but they also have a major influence on how proceedings unfold.
Asked by defense attorney Tamara Brady if Holmes seemed like a happy teenager, Oliver said not to his recollection.
But jurors will decide sentences for only the 12 people he murdered; sentencing for the lesser convictions is set by law. “He was very good in sports”.
But shortly after they started deliberating, it appeared the jury was hung up on the question of whether Holmes meant to kill Moser-Sullivan, or that he simply meant to kill people and a child happened to be one of the victims.
“Holmes’ lawyers complained they’d only been given a copy of the slides at 5pm the night before and many were inflammatory and intended to bias the jury against their client”.
“You loved him?” asked defense attorney Higgs.
The 27-year-old killer was ordered to stand before hearing the decision. “They were trapped in there”, Orman told the jury.
Around 1 p.m., Judge Carlos Samour Jr. read the jury’s verdict.
Now, his attorneys will argue that life in prison without parole, rather than death, is the appropriate sentence.
Holmes was convicted last week of 165 counts, including first-degree murder and attempted murder in the July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colo., theater rampage that took a dozen lives and wounded 70 others.
James Holmes should be put to death for the Colorado theater shooting because he deliberately and cruelly killed 12 people, including a 6-year-old girl, prosecutors told jurors Wednesday.
Jurors will decide sentences for only the 12 people Holmes’ killed.
His parents, neighbors, a college roommate and officials from charities where Holmes volunteered could all be called to testify on his behalf, highlighting so-called mitigating factors that would warrant a life sentence over execution.
The jurors agreed the state proved four factors, but not that Holmes intentionally killed a child.
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Lawyers hope to show that his mental illness and other “mitigating factors” make it wrong to execute him despite the nature of the crimes.
