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| James Holmes and lawyer |
A judge overseeing the Colorado theater massacre case rejected a defense motion on Friday to have a 2nd sanity examination administered to accused gunman James Holmes barred from his upcoming murder trial, court records show.
Holmes, 26, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire inside a Denver-area theater during a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in July of 2012, killing 12 moviegoers and wounding dozens more.
Prosecutors have charged Holmes with multiple counts of 1st-degree murder and attempted murder, and say they will seek the death penalty for the onetime neuroscience graduate student if he is convicted.
Holmes underwent a mandatory psychiatric examination last year after invoking the insanity defense, but Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour ordered a 2nd round of testing, agreeing with prosecutors who argued the 1st one was flawed.
Public defenders sought to have the 2nd evaluation excluded or to limit testimony about it, arguing that it should have not been conducted in the 1st place, and that it overlaps the findings of the 1st examiner.
Results of the 2 mental examinations have not been made public, but in his ruling Samour noted that it was "patently obvious" that the 2 evaluations reached differing conclusions about Holmes' sanity.
"The disparate reactions by the defendant to the two examinations speak volumes about the differences between the 2 reports," Samour wrote.
The judge denied the bulk of the motion, but did order that the 2nd evaluator could not testify at trial about the 1st evaluation's deficiencies.
Samour said 9,000 jury summonses will be sent to county residents next month, and lawyers for both sides will start paring down the list in January.
The judge said he wants opening statements to begin on June 3, but said that date could be moved up if jury selection concludes sooner than he anticipates.
Source: Reuters, November 22, 2014
