Colorado movie theater shooting trial begins
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — During an intense two-hour opening statement Monday, the district attorney for Arapahoe County painted a picture of a “cool” and “meticulous” planner who had thought about killing people for much of his life, and ended up slaughtering a dozen and wounding 70 inside a movie theater nearly three years ago.
As family members of the victims, along with the wounded, listened raptly, sometimes wiping away tears, other times covering their eyes, District Attorney George Brauchler named every one of the people James Eagan Holmes is accused of killing “on a cool July night.”
Holmes sat motionless at the defense table, neatly shorn and wearing a striped dress shirt, looking nothing like the orange-haired suspect staring wide-eyed out from his 2012 mug shot. His parents, Arlene and Robert Holmes of San Diego, sat in the audience behind him, looking exhausted and somber.
There is no question that the onetime neuroscience graduate student pulled the trigger on that bloody summer night. He was arrested outside the theater with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a Remington shotgun and a Glock pistol. He had booby-trapped his apartment. His hair was died bright orange. He said he was the Joker, of Batman fame.
“Four hundred people filed into a boxlike theater to be entertained, and one came to slaughter them,” Brauchler told the jury. “The man that came there that night, covered head to toe in armor to protect himself from injury, brought with him four weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He is in the court with us today. He's seated right over there. He tried to murder a theater full of people to make himself feel better.”
Toward the end of his opening statement, as sniffling could be heard in the courtroom, Brauchler talked about Holmes' booby-trapping of his apartment and entering the crowded theater, and then “starts with the shotgun, and he begins to pull the trigger.”
“Boom!” Brauchler thundered. “A.J. Boik, who is sitting with his fiancee, is shot and killed. Boom! Jesse Childress, the shot ripped through his heart, lungs and organs and he died.”
Half of Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr.'s courtroom was peppered Monday with freshly opened boxes of bright white tissues. And rows of black seats behind the prosecution table have been set aside for men and women who survived the 2012 massacre at a suburban Denver multiplex, and for the families of the 12 people who did not.
Holmes, 27, has been charged with 166 counts in the rampage.
Jurors must decide whether he is guilty, not guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. If he is found guilty, they must then decide if he will be put to death. The defense began its opening statement Monday afternoon.
Brauchler, however, left nothing to chance in the opening statement, discussing at length the results from the four psychiatrists who examined Holmes after the shooting. Two were chosen by the state and two were handpicked by the defense.
The two psychiatrists for the state “said the same thing, that guy,” Brauchler said, pointing again to Holmes, “was sane when he carried out the massacre.” None of the four psychiatrists could agree on a diagnosis, he added.
Samour, in one last brief hearing Monday morning, warned the attorneys in the case that they must give him notice before graphic images are flashed on flat screen monitors placed around the courtroom.
“When witnesses are testifying, I expect attorneys to have control,” Samour cautioned, in one of several warnings that outbursts will not be tolerated during the highly charged trial.
Another was posted on every seat in Division 201: “If at any time during the proceedings you feel the onset of an emotional reaction that may violate the court's order, please quietly and discreetly exit the courtroom.”
Each side has two hours to lay out its case to the 12 jurors and 12 alternates who will decide Holmes' fate at the end of the trial, which is expected to last about four months. The prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was sane at the time of the shootings.
Witnesses are expected to begin testifying Tuesday morning.
In court documents, defense attorneys have said that Holmes “suffers from a severe mental illness and was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he committed the acts that resulted in the tragic loss of life and injuries sustained by moviegoers on July 20, 2012.”
Two years ago, Holmes' lawyers made a standing offer for their client to plead guilty to killing 12 people and injuring 70 others if he could serve a life sentence in prison without the possibility of parole and the ultimate penalty was off the table.
But prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty, and Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. In Colorado, as in a small handful of other states, the burden of proof lies with the district attorney, who must now prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Holmes was sane at the time of the rampage.
Some view the case as a referendum on the death penalty and how society views mental illness. If the death penalty is not given in this case, what crime could possibly rise to the level in which the ultimate punishment would be appropriate?
“For those people who say, ‘Give the Aurora theater killer a plea bargain, let him plead and spend the rest of his life in prison,' that would be the end of capital punishment in Colorado,” said Craig Silverman, former Denver chief deputy district attorney.
But Rick Kornfeld, a former federal prosecutor, argues otherwise: “The question is not, ‘Are there crimes heinous enough that, if there's a death penalty, a death penalty could be an appropriate sentence?' It begs the question of whether the death penalty makes sense.”
During opening statements of the trial, Holmes' attorney showed home videos of his client as a boy and told jurors that Holmes was a “good kid who tried hard.”
Public defender Daniel King pointed to Holmes' parents in the courtroom, saying they were a solid middle-class couple.
“He was what we want all our children to be like,” said King, noting Holmes could be “anyone's son” and that anyone's son could have schizophrenia.
King said his client “now regrets what took place in the theater.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
