Terror And Murder In Colorado

[Lord Jim]

Talking about the death penalty at such a moment is also more than a bit reactionary.

I'll freely admit that I am quite sorry that the cops couldn't have found a reason to take a head shot at the man who just murdered 15 (and counting) people in a movie theater, frustrate his desire for a a public platform, and save the state the cost of a trial...

And I'll make NO apologizes for that....

I feel compelled to comment that it's pretty damned arrogant for you to declare with such certainty the suspect's motive, when medical personnel are still treating the wounded and LE are still in the initial stages of investigation.

I stated my opinion, and cited the evidence that I believe supports it...

Which is what I usually do around here...

If you don't like it, you can




BTW, I just heard Cliff Van Zandt, the noted FBI criminal profiler, give an analysis nearly identical to mine on MSNBC.... :

[Lord Jim]

The Mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind fine:

James Holmes found guilty of murder in Colorado theater shooting

CENTENNIAL, CO --
Jurors convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes on Thursday in the chilling 2012 attack on defenseless moviegoers at a midnight Batman premiere, rejecting defense arguments that the former graduate student was insane and driven to murder by delusions.

The 27-year-old Holmes, who had been working toward his Ph.D. in neuroscience, could get the death penalty for the massacre that left 12 people dead and dozens of others wounded.

Jurors took about 13 hours over a day and a half to review all 165 charges. The same panel must now decide whether Holmes should pay with his life.

The verdict came almost three years after Holmes, dressed head-to-toe in body armor, slipped through the emergency exit of the darkened theater in suburban Denver and replaced the Hollywood violence of the movie "The Dark Knight Rises" with real human carnage.

Tom Teves and his wife Caren, who lost their son Alex in the 2012 Aurora movie theatre massacre, speak to members of the media AP Photo/ Brennan Linsley


His victims included two active-duty servicemen, a single mom, a man celebrating his 27th birthday and an aspiring broadcaster who had survived a mall shooting in Toronto. Several died shielding friends or loved ones.

The trial offered a rare glimpse into the mind of a mass shooter, as most are killed by police, kill themselves or plead guilty.

Prosecutors argued Holmes knew exactly what he was doing when he methodically gunned down strangers in the stadium-style theater, taking aim at those who fled. They painted him as a calculated killer who sought to assuage his failures in school and romance with a mass murder that he believed would increase his personal worth.

He snapped photos of himself with fiery orange hair and scrawled his plans for the massacre in a spiral notebook he sent his university psychiatrist just hours before the attack, all in a calculated effort to be remembered, prosecutors said.

The prosecution called more than 200 witnesses over two months, more than 70 of them survivors, including some who were missing limbs and using wheelchairs. They recalled the panic to escape the black-clad gunman.

The youngest to die was a 6-year-old girl whose mother also suffered a miscarriage and was paralyzed in the attack. Another woman who was nine months pregnant at the time described her agonizing decision to leave her wounded husband behind in the theater to save their baby. She later gave birth in the same hospital where he was in a coma. He can no longer walk and has trouble talking.

That Holmes was the lone gunman was never in doubt. He was arrested in the parking lot as survivors were still fleeing, and he warned police he had rigged his nearby apartment into a potentially lethal booby trap, which he hoped would divert first responders from the theater.

His attorneys argued he suffers from schizophrenia and was in the grip of a psychotic breakdown so severe that he was unable to tell right from wrong - Colorado's standard for insanity. They said he was delusional even as he secretively acquired the three murder weapons - a shotgun, a handgun and an AR-15 rifle - while concealing his plans from friends and two worried psychiatrists in the months before the shooting.

Defense lawyers tried to present him as a once-promising student so crippled by mental illness that he couldn't reveal his struggles to anyone who might have helped. They called two psychiatrists, including a nationally known schizophrenia expert, who concluded Holmes was psychotic and legally insane.

But two state-appointed doctors found otherwise, testifying for prosecutors that no matter what Holmes' mental state was that night, he knew what he was doing was wrong.

Jurors watched nearly 22 hours of videotaped interviews showing Holmes talking in a flat, mechanical tone about his desire to kill strangers to increase his self-worth. Using short, reluctant answers, he said he felt nothing as he fired, blasting techno music through his earphones to drown out his victims' screams.

Prosecutors showed jurors Holmes' spiral notebook, where he scribbled a self-diagnosis of his "broken mind" and described his "obsession to kill" since childhood. The pages alternate between incoherent ramblings and elaborate plans for the killings, including lists of weapons to buy and diagrams showing which auditoriums in the theater complex would allow for the most casualties.

Jurors saw an investigator's video of the shooting's aftermath. It showed bodies wedged between rows of seats and sprawled across aisles amid spent ammunition, spilled popcorn and blood.

During the sentencing phase, Holmes' attorneys will present so-called mitigating factors that they hope will save his life. Those will probably include more evidence of mental illness and a sympathetic portrayal of his childhood. Prosecutors will present so-called aggravating factors in support of the death penalty, including the large number of victims.

http://abc13.com/news/jury-finds-colora ... er/856514/

Jurors took about 13 hours over a day and a half to review all 165 charges. The same panel must now decide whether Holmes should pay with his life.

I'll be very surprised if this no good sonuvabitch isn't called upon to pay with his life...

[Gob]

A jury in the US state of Colorado has spared gunman James Holmes the death penalty for killing 12 people at a screening of a Batman film in 2012.

He will serve life in jail without the possibility of parole.

The defence team had argued that the former neuroscience graduate student, now 27, was insane at the time.

The jury agreed with prosecutors that Holmes, though mentally ill, was responsible for his actions. But it was not unanimous on the death penalty.

That lack of agreement meant the jury accepted he would receive an automatic life sentence without parole.

One juror later told NBC News that two members of the jury were "on the fence" about the death penalty but that another was adamantly opposed on the grounds of mental illness.

"We ended our deliberations when one absolutely would not move," the juror said.

The decision of the jury - a panel of nine women and three men - was revealed by Judge Carlos Samour in a courtroom in the city of Centennial on Friday.

[Lord Jim]

I'll be very surprised if this no good sonuvabitch isn't called upon to pay with his life...

And I'm very surprised...

Apparently, one member of the jury held out and failed to give this piece garbage the justice he deserved...

Well, that's how our system works...

It would be nice if that person had to go and meet with all of the families affected by this and explain their decision...

But that's not how our system works...

[Guinevere]

And a Boston jury condemned Tsarnaev to death. Maybe he really couldn't get a fair trial here. If I were his lawyers I'd be jumping up and down about this result.