The jury found that Holmes’ mental problems and the portrait his attorneys painted of a kinder, gentler man did not outweigh the horrors of his calculated attack on defenseless moviegoers.
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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. In his jail cell, Holmes didn’t post the family pictures his parents gave him, but instead the pictures of scantily clad women who wrote to him. Arlene Holmes began to cry, and Robert held out a box of tissues for her. Holmes, his reactions dulled by anti-psychotic drugs, stood as ordered and appeared emotionless as the judge read the decisions.
Ian Sullivan, the father of Holmes’ youngest victim, 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, closed his eyes when Samour read her name.
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. Jurors agreed and said the crime was so heinous that the death penalty could be appropriate.
[Jurors were allowed to stay despite seeing news about the Lafayette, La., movie theater shooting].
“We’re very happy the outcome came as quickly as it did”, Phillips told reporters outside court after the verdict.
Earlier, jurors said that Holmes’ lawyers had not presented a strong enough case to eliminate execution as an option. They will then deliberate on whether the 27-year-old shooter should be executed by lethal injection.
The decision clears the way for another round of arguments before the jury makes a final decision between capital punishment and life in prison without parole. Friends of victims can testify, but they can’t talk about the impact the shooting had on them, Samour said. The jury said last month that the prosecution proved these factors were there, inching closer to considering a possible death sentence.
Some of the families of the 12 people killed in the Colorado theater shooting are arriving in court to hear whether jurors will keep the death penalty on the table for gunman James Holmes. Jurors deliberated for about an hour last week and 90 minutes this morning before reaching their verdict.
The second part of the sentencing process, which just ended Monday, focused on mitigating factors, and whether they might serve as a basis for leniency for the failed neuroscience student.
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Holmes, 27, attacked a cinema in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight screening of Batman film The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012.
