Death penalty not ruled out for US gunman

Jurors weighing James E. Holmes’ fate moved one step closer to sentencing him to death Monday when they decided that the gunman in the Aurora, Colo., mass shooting did not deserve leniency for killing 12 movie-goers and injuring 70 others.

The jury in the James Holmes trial has made a decision regarding a third penalty phase as they work to make a decision on whether he gets life in prison or the death penality.

Last month, after Holmes was convicted on all 165 counts in the shooting rampage, the jury determined that there were “aggravating factors” in his crimes that warranted consideration of the death penalty.

Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed while celebrating his 27th birthday, said, “This is a good day” as he entered the courthouse in suburban Denver.

These mitigating factors do not justify or excuse the murders, Samour told the jury at the beginning of this trial phase, but they “might serve as a basis for a sentence less than death”.

The trial will now move into its third phase as the jurors return to deliberations to determine whether to sentence Holmes to life without parole or death. The technical wording of the verdicts was confusing, but their meaning seemed clear to both Holmes’s parents and the victims and family members of the deceased, who sat on the opposite side of the courtroom, nearest to the jury and farthest from Holmes.

Reported by NBC News, the jury voted on Monday to keep the death penalty open as a possibility for the punishment of James Holmes.

The defense team also played a video clip of Holmes with a psychiatrist in an effort to show the act was not done for notoriety.

Nevertheless, the doctors said the shooting likely never would have happened were it not for Holmes’s mental illness.

On July 16 the same jury found Holmes guilty of the first-degree murder of 12 people at the theater.

His father, Robert Holmes, said that he and his wife had no idea before the massacre that their eldest child was mentally ill or wanted to kill.

For example, speakers will be able to talk about the last time they saw their loved ones, but only briefly. “Schizophrenia chose him. He didn’t choose it”.

Holmes’ parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes, held hands and kept their eyes on the floor while the judge announced the series of verdicts rejecting an immediate sentence of life in prison.

Holmes had been in the neuroscience Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado.

They contended the violence was Holmes’ attempt to assuage his failures in graduate school and romance.