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Summary: James Holmes shot-up a packed movie theater three years ago, killing twelve. His was found guilty on all 165 charges against him.
The Aurora movie theater shooting happened three years ago but victims are finally getting some closure today as the verdict came in on James Holmes. The trial has drawn on as Holmes team tried to use insanity as their defense argument. The jury of three men and nine women saw right through it, knowing what he did was a deliberate act.
Holmes was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for each victim, 24 total. He was also found guilty of the additional 134 counts of first-degree attempted murder, six counts of attempted second-degree murder and one count of explosives possession. For one hour with defendant Holmes standing for all of it, Judge Carlos Samour Jr. read “guilty” 165 times, including the name of the person affected for 164 of the charges.
The prosecution claimed that Holmes spent months planning the attack and had wanted to make others hurt like he was. Holmes had recently broken up with his girlfriend, failed a big test, and dropped out of the University of Colorado where he was a neuroscience graduate student.
The defense team argued that Holmes was suffering from a delusional belief related to a recent diagnosis with a form of schizophrenia. They said that Holmes believed killing would increase his “human capital”.
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The jury only took two days and a total of less than 13 hours to deliberate. A good part of the time was spent filling out the paperwork. The foreman of the jury had to sign his name 329 times on the 659 pages of verdict forms. He also happened to be a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting.
The next step of the trial will be deciding if he should face the death penalty. The legal teams will debate the legal issues from death penalty procedures. Colorado has not had a death penalty sentence since 2009 by the same county.
Photo: wikipedia.org
