Death Penalty News

James E. Holmes (L), Dexter Lewis (R) In the past 12 months, two separate polls have indicated that most Coloradans support the death penalty. In September of last year, a Denver Post poll found 63 % of respondents support the death penalty, with 28 % opposed (the rest were unsure). And 2 months ago a Quinnipiac University poll found 67 % of respondents in Colorado supported the death penalty, with only 26 % saying it should be abolished. Both of those polls occurred, of course, before the recent verdicts that sentenced both James Holmes and Dexter Lewis to life in prison without a chance for parole. Does that change the political calculus for Coloradans? Does the fact that criminals who committed 2 of the most brutal massacres in memory in this state escaped the death penalty despite the efforts of highly skilled prosecutors say anything about whether the law should be retained? We think it does. Indeed, the verdicts seem to confirm what death penalty oppo...

James E. Holmes (left), Dexter Lewis (right) For the 2nd time this summer, a first-rate team of Colorado prosecutors could not secure a death sentence for the perpetrator of crimes of almost indescribable horror. Dexter Lewis, like James Holmes, will spend the rest of his life behind bars instead. Never mind that he is guilty of stabbing 5 people to death 3 years ago in an orgy of utter depravity. 1 or more jurors obviously concluded that his woefully sad and painful childhood made him an inappropriate candidate for capital punishment. This is no criticism of the jury. That conclusion is entirely defensible and perhaps even predictable - just as it was always plausible that defense attorneys would convince at least one juror in Holmes' trial that he was too mentally ill to be put to death. Moreover, a death sentence for Lewis - a black man - would have raised equity questions after Holmes, who is white, was able to secure life without parole. But if both verdic...

James Holmes (L) and Dexter Lewis (R) sentenced to life in prison DENVER - Two Colorado juries have rejected the death penalty for mass murderers in a single month. Add to that the governor's controversial decision to grant clemency to the last killer who was supposed to be executed, and it begs a question: Will Colorado ever use the death penalty again? Jurors in Arapahoe County, the only Colorado County that currently has killers awaiting the death penalty, could not unanimously agree to sentence the Aurora movie theater gunman to die by lethal injection. Instead, the man who killed 12 people and wounded 70 others during a movie premiere was sentenced to 12 lifetimes in prison plus 3,318 years -- one of the longest prison terms in history. Just days later, a Denver County jury decided that mitigating factors were sufficient to stop the process in pursuit of the death penalty for the man who stabbed five people to death in a ba r that was subsequently set on fire. T...

James Holmes sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 3,318 years The gunman who shot and killed 12 people inside a packed Aurora, Colo., movie theater in 2012 was formally sentenced Wednesday morning to life in prison without parole. In July, a jury found James Holmes guilty on each of the 165 charges he faced in the case, unanimously rejecting an argument made by his attorneys that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.  But last month, the same jury said he should be sentenced to life imprisonment rather than death by lethal injection, a surprising decision considering that jurors had declined earlier opportunities to spare him a death sentence. District Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. announced the sentence at a hearing Wednesday, ending a grueling, emotional trial that had stretched out for much of this year.  As Samour had told the jurors before they deliberated on Holmes’s punishment, he was required to sentence the gunman to life in pri...

James E. Holmes As the judge sentenced James Holmes to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his act of homicidal madness in a Colorado theater, relatives of the twelve people he killed wept, or sucked in their breaths in disbelief and disappointment. According to the A.P.’s account, for example, “Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi was killed by Holmes, shook her head no and then held it in her hands.” As long as death is a possible option in our sentencing schemes, then anything short of death means that your “victim” – the son or daughter or wife or mother whose life the defendant ended – is of lesser value than the victim that earned the ultimate penalty. The difference between a sentence of 25 years, for example, and life in prison is vast, but it is measured on a scale of years that all of us can understand. However, the difference between any sentence of years and death is more than just vast, it is of a different realm, necessarily beyond our ex...

James E. Holmes One juror refused to give James Holmes the death penalty because of his mental illness, according to a juror who spoke when the trial ended. Two others were uncertain but were willing to continue talking about it, said Juror 17, who declined to give her name. "The issue of mental illness was everything for the one who did not want to impose the death penalty," Juror 17 said. It did not take long for the entire 12-member panel to realize minds were made up and would not change, she said. Still, the seven-hour deliberation was cordial and respectful among a group that had become close over the past three months. "The jury instructions were clear this was an individual decision, and we had to make it based on our own moral view of what's right and wrong," she said. During his closing arguments, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler told the jury that if any of them were not convinced that death was the appro...

James E. Holmes CENTENNIAL, Colo., — A jury sentenced James E. Holmes to life in prison with no chance of parole on Friday, rejecting the death penalty for the man who carried out a 2012 shooting rampage that killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. As the courtroom waited for Judge Carlos Samour Jr. to review the verdict, only the sound of him turning pages could be heard. Minutes later, he read each sentence of life, a decision that was a surprise to many in the courtroom. Since Mr. Holmes was convicted last month of more than 160 counts of murder and attempted murder, his lawyers and prosecutors have been putting questions of his fate before a jury of nine women and three men. Prosecutors, emphasizing the human toll and indiscriminate cruelty of opening fire on a happy crowd of moviegoers, argued that he should join the three other men on Colorado’s death row. They argued that toll he exacted was so great, and the indiscriminate rampage so horrible, that death ...

James E. Holmes The jury in the Colorado theater shooting trial will hear even more heart-wrenching testimony Tuesday from those who lost loved ones in the attack, as prosecutors begin their final push to have James Holmes sentenced to death.. It comes after jurors rejected arguments Monday that the former neuroscience student's mental illness should remove the death penalty as an option. They deliberated for less than 3 hours. "The case for death is only going to get stronger from this point forward," said Denver attorney and former prosecutor Craig Silverman. "This jury is not going to want to disappoint the families of these victims. ... I'd be very surprised if the verdict was anything other than death." The same jury swiftly rejected Holmes' insanity defense, deciding he was capable of telling right from wrong when he opened fire during a Batman movie in the Denver suburb of Aurora on July 20, 2012. Their quick decision Monday also...

James E. Holmes James Holmes, the Colorado movie massacre gunman, could face the death penalty after jurors found on Monday that aggravating factors including the cruel nature of his crimes counted for more than mitigating ones such as mental illness. The panel of nine women and three men will now hear from victims of the July 2012 rampage at a midnight screening of the Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises." They will then deliberate on whether the 27-year-old shooter should be executed by lethal injection. After cautioning members of the public against making any emotional outbursts in the small, windowless courtroom on the outskirts of Denver, Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour began reading the jurors' forms. Holmes, who killed 12 people and wounded 70, showed no reaction as the verdicts were delivered, staring straight head, hands in pockets. He has been mostly expressionless throughout the trial, which began in late April. Sitting i...

The majority of Coloradans want their state to kill James Holmes. But if he receives the death penalty, the Department of Corrections may not be ready. Convicted murderer James Holmes is now awaiting his sentence. He faces the death penalty for his crimes, a punishment 2/3 of Coloradans believe he deserves. But lethal injection drugs are increasingly hard to obtain. If the jury sentences Holmes to death, is Colorado actually capable of carrying it out? Like all 31 states that still allow capital punishment, Colorado uses lethal injection as its primary means of execution. But it almost never happens: The 1997 death of Gary Lee Davis remains the state's only execution in almost 50 years, and the only time Colorado has ever performed a lethal injection. We are, in the words of death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, "not a killing state." The Colorado Department of Corrections, tasked with performing executions, doesn't even keep drugs for th...

The poll also found that Colorado voters support the death penalty A Quinnipiac University poll released Monday shows Colorado voters oppose tougher gun control laws, especially among men and Republicans. The poll showed voters oppose such laws 56-39 %, with a 80-18 % opposition among Republicans. Independent voters oppose tougher laws by 59-35 % while Democrats support tougher laws 76-19 %. According to the poll, men oppose tougher laws 69-27 %, while women support them 51-44 %. The poll, completed as part of a swing state gauge that also included Iowa and Virginia, questioned 1,231 Colorado voters with a margin of error of 2.8 % points. The poll also found Colorado voters approve 51-40 % of Gov. John Hickenlooper's work. The voters also approved of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet by 41-34 % approval rating though the poll showed voters say 40-32 % that he does not deserve reelection in 2016. Voters gave U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner a 48-28 % approval rating, accordi...

James E. Holmes You can't execute a minor. You can't execute someone with a sufficiently low IQ. How does mental illness fit into that equation? Now that James Holmes has been found guilty of the terror that he brought to the Aurora theater that night 3 years ago, the real trial begins, in which the jurors decide whether Holmes lives or dies. No one can be surprised by the guilty verdict in a trial in which the testimony was so often so heartbreaking. The mass murders were not only an offense against the victims and their families, but also an offense against an entire community. And in any case, the question wasn't whether Holmes had done the unthinkable. He had admitted he had. The question put to the jury was only whether Holmes was legally sane when he did the unthinkable. It was clear from the start how this phase of the trial would end. Whether the testimony actually showed him to be sane or insane, Holmes would inevitably be found sane enough. And so...

James E. Holmes CENTENNIAL, Colo. — James E. Holmes, whose shooting rampage three years ago killed 12 and wounded 70 inside a suburban Denver movie theater, was found guilty on Thursday in a state court. A jury deliberated for 13 hours over two days before rejecting pleas from defense lawyers that Mr. Holmes, 27, had a severe mental illness and was not legally responsible for his actions on the night of July 20, 2012. The decision was delivered in Arapahoe County District Court after 10 weeks of testimony from more than 250 witnesses. They included survivors whose friends and family were killed, psychiatrists who offered contrasting views of Mr. Holmes’s mental state, and his former classmates from the University of Colorado whose memories of him as an introverted, awkward young man belied the armor-clad gunman who walked into the theater and started shooting. Coming within days of the Aurora shooting’s third anniversary, the guilty verdict ends one phase of a grueling...

James E. Holmes Jurors will begin deliberating his fate Wednesday on the 165 charges Holmes faces in connection to the suburban Denver carnage. Their decision will come about six months after jury selection began and more than 11 weeks after the trial's start. Prosecutors alone called more than 200 witnesses to the stand, among them investigators, students who knew Holmes and his ex-girlfriend. By virtue of his pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, the now 27-year-old Holmes has never denied he was behind the killing. But given his mental state, his lawyers argue that he should not be found culpable. Prosecutors painted a picture of a once-promising neuroscience student who knew exactly what he was doing, both carrying out the attack and rigging his apartment with makeshift explosives ahead of authorities' arrival. Those who spent time with Holmes as a PhD student at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora described him as quie...

James E. Holmes Defense lawyers trying to avoid the death penalty for Colorado movie massacre gunman James Holmes wrapped up their case on Friday, hoping they have convinced jurors he was legally insane when he carried out one of the worst U.S. mass shootings. They concede that he killed 12 people and wounded 70 when he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun and pistol inside a movie theater in 2012, and that had rigged his apartment with bombs before he left. But they say he suffers schizophrenia and was not in control of his actions. Prosecutors accuse Holmes of being a cold-blooded murderer who aimed to kill all 400 people in the packed midnight premiere of a Batman film at the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, a Denver suburb. He failed in part because the drum magazine he bought for his rifle jammed. After playing jurors a video of the defendant naked and running head-long into a cell wall, and another of him thrashing around in restraints at a hospital, the d...

James E. Holmes A star witness for the defense in James E. Holmes's murder trial testified this week that Mr. Holmes was schizophrenic and legally insane in July 2012, when he opened fire in a crowded movie theater in the neighboring suburb of Aurora, killing 12 people and injuring 70. The witness, Dr. Raquel Gur, was 1 of 4 psychiatrists who examined Mr. Holmes after the shootings, and her observations bolstered the defense's position that while Mr. Holmes was indeed the gunman, he met the legal standard for insanity at the time. Dr. Gur, who began her testimony on Monday, explained that she had questioned Mr. Holmes for 28 hours over 6 days, starting in late 2012. "The severity and intensity of his psychosis," she said on Tuesday, "was so high, so severe, as to render him incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong." It was crucial testimony in a trial that started on April 27 in the Arapahoe County courthouse in Centennial, Colo.,...

James E. Holmes DENVER, United States, June 27 (Xinhua) -- Lawyers defending Colorado mass murderer James Holmes this week began the difficult job of proving the Ph.D. candidate was insane when he ripped hundreds of bullets into a movie theater audience, killing 12 people and wounding 70 others. Their task will be difficult because two key psychiatrists already testified Holmes is mentally ill, but was not legally " insane" three years ago when he planned and executed one of the worst mass murders in U.S. history. If found "insane," Holmes' " not guilty by reason of insanity" plea will be upheld and he will spend the rest of his life incarcerated and avoid the death penalty. The defense's first psychiatrist, who called Holmes "insane," endured a blistering cross-examination Friday by lead prosecutor, Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler. Dr. Jonathan Woodcock interviewed Holmes twice, the first time just fou...