They all said they still loved him, and blamed severe mental illness for what he did.
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Prosecutors and defense attorneys waived a reading of the new and amended charges, but court officials later posted them online. “It had nothing to do with notoriety”.
On their 60th day in court, jurors in the Aurora theater shooting trial will take their seats Thursday and hear lawyers make closing arguments in the second sentencing phase.
Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office(CENTENNIAL, Colo.) – The jury in the James Holmes murder trial went home Friday now without reaching a decision with plans to continue deliberation on Monday.
Jurors in the Colorado theater shooting trial have started considering whether to keep the death penalty on the table for gunman James Holmes or sentence him to life in prison because of his mental illness or other factors.
The nine women and three men unanimously agreed that the 2012 attack was cruel enough to justify the death penalty.
His mental illness was, and still is, the sole cause of his shooting. If they now decide death remains an option, they will next hear from victims and survivors before deliberating his sentence.
As examples, the judge said Holmes is asserting a series factors that point to mercy, including his age and emotional state at the time of the crime, his limited capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct, his cooperation with authorities, and any other evidence introduced by his defense.
“This is an individual decision and not a group decision”, Samour stressed, and each juror must give each aggravating and mitigating factor as much or as little weight as they alone determine.
With that proved, the defense has been presenting its case for mitigating factors, which could include that Holmes’s ability to tell right from wrong was significantly impaired, or that he was under particular duress.
“Holmes was genetically loaded to experience a psychotic disorder”, given the extensive history of schizophrenia on his father’s side of the family. Holmes was also convicted of attempted murder on all of the 140 counts against him for the 70 people wounded in the shooting.
They said his prescription drugs could have increased his mania before the attack, and that he seems stable and non-expressive now only because he’s on anti-psychotic medicine to stabilize incurable brain diseases.
Holmes still struggles to explain, even years later, why his “mission” took such irrevocable control over his mind.
“How many videos of him 8 years old and younger would it take to outweigh that horror?” he asked. “Nobody is born a mass-murderer”. Jurors are due in court at 11:30 a.m. for closing arguments and then are expected to begin deliberations. “That happens later”.
If they do, Holmes would be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
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Judge Carlos Samour Jr. met in court with attorneys on Thursday morning to discuss instructions for the jury. Can anything outweigh that? “But lacking precisely the same grey matter that weve doesn’t guard against the effect of persons judgements”, Brauchler said.
