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Aurora shooting trial: prosecutors building case James Holmes was sane Aurora shooting trial: psychiatrist says James Holmes knew what he was doing
(about 9 hours later)
Prosecutors are methodically building a case that James Holmes knew right from wrong when he planned and carried out the deadly Colorado theater shootings, hoping to convince jurors he should be convicted and executed and not sent to a mental hospital. A state-appointed psychiatrist who examined James Holmes two years after his attack on a Colorado movie theater said on Thursday that whatever he suffered from that night, he knew what he was doing.
After a month of testimony from victims and investigators, prosecutors this week shifted to Holmes’ mental state. They showed jurors notes that Holmes made on how long it would take police to respond to an attack on the theater as well as a dating website profile on which he asked: “Will you visit me in prison?” Dr William Reid told jurors he believed Holmes knew the consequences when he opened fire at a midnight Batman movie premiere, killing 12 people and wounding 58. Twelve others were injured in the chaos.
Reminded that his task was to determine whether Holmes was legally sane during the attack, Reid declared: “Whatever he suffered from, it did not prevent him from forming intent and knowing the consequences of what he was doing.”
The comment briefly frustrated the prosecutor, who said his witness had jumped ahead of him, and prompted the defense to ask for a mistrial.
Judge Carlos Samour ultimately denied the request, even as he acknowledged that it might confuse jurors on about Colorado’s legal definition of sanity, the key question of the trial. They must decide whether Holmes’s disease or deficient mental state left him unable to form “a culpable mental state” at the time the crime was committed.
Essentially, the judge said, Reid was supposed to limit his opinions to whether Holmes was capable of understanding right from wrong – but not whether he actually understood it.
“I do think someone could misunderstand the use of the term ‘prevent’,” Samour said, but he ruled that Reid’s overall comments didn’t violate that subtle boundary.
After a long break to settle the question, district attorney George Brauchler asked Reid “to be precise” about his findings, and the psychiatrist gave the briefest possible responses.
Did Holmes have a serious mental illness?
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A state-appointed psychiatrist who examined Holmes, William Reid, is expected to testify Thursday. District attorney George Brauchler has already told jurors the doctor concluded Holmes was legally sane. “Yes.”
In the coming days, prosecutors also plan to show 22 hours of videotaped interviews that Reid conducted with Holmes. They will periodically stop the video to question Reid about the conversations. Despite that illness, did Holmes have “the capacity to know right from wrong” on 19 and 20 July, the night of the attack?
Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the 20 July 2012, attack on a suburban Denver theater, which killed 12 people and injured 70. “Yes.”
Under Colorado law, the burden of proof is Brauchler’s team to convince the jury that Holmes was sane. On Tuesday, they showed jurors a notebook Holmes kept, with scribbled maps and cramped handwriting that sketched out a chilling list of choices: mass murder or serial murder, attack a theater or an airport, use guns, bombs or biological warfare. Did Holmes have the capacity to form the intent to act after deliberation, and to act knowingly?
It details which auditoriums in the theater complex had the fewest exits and offered the least chance he would be detected. One map shows the theater complex and a nearby police station and National Guard building. “ETA response (is about) 3 mins,” Holmes wrote. “Yes.”
Coupled with other prosecution evidence about Holmes’s behavior, the notebook is a serious blow to the defense, said Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has worked on sanity cases but isn’t involved in the Holmes trial. And did Holmes meet the legal definition of sanity?
The defense has said Holmes suffers from schizophrenia and the disease had so distorted his mind that he did not know right from wrong – Colorado’s standard for an insanity verdict. “Yes.”
But the notebook “speaks to his appreciation of wrongfulness”, Pitt said. Mental illness alone is not enough to satisfy an insanity verdict in Colorado, he noted. Pitt said the notebook does provide the defense with strong evidence Holmes was mentally ill, which they could use to argue against the death penalty if he is convicted. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but Colorado law gives the state the burden to prove he was sane, and therefore guilty. Prosecutors want him executed, not sent to a mental hospital.
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“This is a guy who is really struggling and is clearly mentally ill,” Pitt said. Defense attorney Daniel King told jurors that much of the notebook consists of Holmes’s confused musings about his life. King cited Holmes’s ramblings on the meaning of life and death, as well as the question, “Why?” repeated over eight pages. The appearance of Reid, who spent 22 hours interviewing Holmes in July 2014, follows a month of testimony from victims, first responders and investigators. The judge asked for Reid’s interview after prosecutors challenged the conclusions of the first state-ordered review of his sanity, by Dr Jeffrey Metzner in December 2013.
Defense lawyers will call their own witnesses to buttress their argument that Holmes was insane starting in about three weeks, after prosecutors finish. In the notebook, Holmes tries to document his self-diagnosed mental illness, listing 13 ailments including schizophrenia and “borderline, narcissistic, anxious, avoidant and obsessive compulsive personality disorder”. He took five pages to list mental illness symptoms. “So, anyways, that’s my mind,” he wrote. “It’s broken. I tried to fix it.” By then, Holmes had been anti-psychotic medicine for months, in part because 20 doctors who treated Holmes after his arrest agreed he suffers from a serious psychotic illness, defense attorney Dan King said early in the trial.
It wasn’t clear when Holmes wrote the notebook, and no expert witnesses have confirmed Holmes’ self-described conditions. Earlier this week, prosecutors showed jurors what Holmes wrote in his notebook before the attack, such as an estimated time for the police response (“3 mins”) and diagrams of the theater complex showing which auditorium had the fewest exits where victims might escape.
With detailed maps and cramped handwriting, Holmes sketched out a chilling list of choices: mass murder or serial murder; attack a theater or an airport; use guns, bombs or biological warfare.
The graduate student in neuroscience also sought to diagnose himself, listing 13 ailments including schizophrenia and “borderline, narcissistic, anxious, avoidant and obsessive compulsive personality disorder”.
“So, anyways, that’s my mind,” Holmes wrote. “It’s broken. I tried to fix it.”