Victims and family get free rein at theater shooter’s sentencing

He faces a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after he was found guilty; during the sentencing phase, one juror would not agree to the death penalty.

Many of those who have spoken since the hearing began on Monday thanked the prosecutors and Arapahoe District Court Judge Carlos Samour for how they handled the months-long trial.

The formal sentencing hearing is expected to take three days.

Robert Sullivan, the grandfather of the youngest victim, 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, called on Holmes to “do the correct thing for once” and petition the court to be executed by firing squad. The jury has already convicted Holmes of the killings and determined that he should spend life in prison.

“Why sentence someone to a thousand years?” she said.

While we part company with Pourciau on whether Holmes should have received the death penalty, her questions are indeed pertinent to any discussion of capital punishment’s future in this state. Samour has not set a limit on the number of people who can testify at the hearing.

“I don’t have any basis in front of me or any reason anyone has put in front of me (to conclude) there was deception”, he said.

“But you can’t then claim that there wasn’t justice because it wasn’t the outcome you were expecting”, he said.

Samour said the jury was fair and impartial, and he tried his utmost to be the same.

Samour said: “If it was a popularity contest, then you could never have justice”.

Afterward, she sat quietly and nodded, but she showed no other reaction as Samour defended the trial.

She and Sullivan were among more than 18 people who told Samour about the physical pain, the grief and despair caused by Holmes’ rampage.

Beginning in April, jurors spent 15 weeks listening to proof within the case towards the previous neuroscience doctoral scholar whom prosecutors argued was upset about failures in his private and academic life. Holmes, shackled and wearing a jail uniform, showed little emotion and sometimes twiddled his thumbs.

Holmes’ attorneys blamed the massacre on his schizophrenia and psychotic delusions, and experts testified that it wouldn’t have happened if he were not seriously mentally ill.

“There’s no human language that can convey the pain I have witnessed seize a hold of my family”, said Kristian Cowden, whose father Gordon Cowden was the oldest of those killed.

Their testimony will have no bearing on Holmes’ fate.

Michael Dailey spoke of the psychological challenges that he and his colleagues faced in the aftermath of the shooting, mentioning that many responders have struggled with depression and nightmares since that night.

He called Holmes a monster who should be banished from public sight and forgotten.

Dailey says he hopes every day is painful for Holmes and that “prison is not kind to him”.