Victims’ families arrive for theatre verdict

Colorado theater shooting survivor Jansen Young says she finally has closure with the guilty verdict against shooter James Holmes.

Starting next week, jurors will hear testimony about Holmes’ mental illness and his childhood.

Now, the same jury panel must decide if he deserves the death penalty for his crimes.

The judge in the Colorado theater shooting case has finished reading the jury’s verdicts on all 165 counts against James Holmes.

Dressed in a blue dress shirt and khakis, he stood at the defense table, three of his public defenders on both sides of him and two more standing behind him.

The rest of the courtroom was bursting with emotion.

Sullivan nodded his head as the verdict was read Thursday.

Because of the not guilty by reason of insanity plea, that means the jury needs to find the prosecution proved the gunman was sane, as defined by Colorado law.

Alexander Teves. He had just earned a Master’s degree in counseling psychology.

While some shared their compassion for victims, their families and the Aurora community, others like Jessica Ghawi’s brother used his platform to discuss the shooter’s fate. “It feels good to have this weight off our backs”.

Holmes’ parents, Arlene and Robert, sat silently holding hands throughout the verdicts.

Holmes is on trial for allegedly murdering 12 moviegoers and injuring 70 more on July 20, 2012, when he opened fire inside a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.

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.

“This has been an emotional and hard time for the victims, their families, loved ones and friends”, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper said in a statement.

He is guilty of mass murder.

Prosecutors said Holmes planned and carried out the massacre to assuage the pain of his failures in graduate school and in romance. During trial, a bailiff once accused her of sleeping in court, but she said she was just resting her eyes.

Jurors heard almost three months of testimony, including heartbreaking and sometimes gruesome survival stories.

The youngest to die was a 6-year-old girl whose mother also suffered a miscarriage and was paralyzed in the attack.

She was inside the theater the night of the attack, with her boyfriend Jonathan Blunk.

That Holmes was the lone gunman was never in doubt. His children escaped the theater unharmed.

Holmes’ lawyers argued that 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 anxious psychiatrists in the months before the shooting. “It’s all these families that have been touched by this massive tragedy”, Watts said. “I can’t imagine what’s going through his mind, but I’d love to know”. It showed bodies wedged between rows of seats and sprawled across aisles amid spent ammunition, spilled popcorn and blood. They must now decide whether Holmes should be executed or sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

“We don’t care if he ends up getting the death penalty or not, it’s over for us”.