US ‘cinema gunman’ James Holmes faces death penalty
Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for James Holmes, accused of killing 12 people during a showing of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” last year, a court in Colorado has heard.
Mr Holmes, 25, is accused of opening fire inside a suburban Denver theater during a midnight screening of the movie last July in what was one of the deadliest outbursts of gun violence in US history.
Mr Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the shooting rampage, which also wounded 58 moviegoers. Another dozen people suffered non-gunshot injuries as they fled the Aurora, Colorado, cinema.
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler had previously announced he had assigned a death penalty lawyer to the prosecution team, and in court documents released March 28 rejected a defence offer to let Mr Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence if capital punishment were taken off the table.
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Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester entered a not guilty plea for Holmes last month but said he would consider allowing that to be changed to not guilty by reason of insanity.
Last week, public defenders said in a court filing that Mr Holmes was willing to plead guilty and serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole if prosecutors agreed not to seek to have their client executed.
While Mr Holmes’ attorneys said they are prepared to mount an insanity defence, they wrote in the filing that “Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion for all involved.”
Mr Brauchler, in a written response, called the move by the defence improper at this stage of the case and “that it was filed for the intended purpose of generating the predictable pretrial publicity.”
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“The only conclusion that an objective reader would reach … is that the defendant knows that he is guilty, the defense attorneys know he is guilty and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane,” Brauchler wrote.
In court pleadings, public defenders Daniel King and Tamara Brady have said Holmes has been hospitalized twice since his arrest, once for “potential self-inflicted injuries.”
At one point, jailers determined Mr Holmes was a danger to himself and in “immediate need of a psychiatric evaluation.” He was transported by ambulance to a Denver psychiatric ward “where he was held for several days, frequently in restraints,” his lawyers wrote.