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Thread: James Holmes Sentenced to LWOP in 2012 Deadly Colorado Theater Shooting

  1. #231
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    That's a much better system.

    Just chatting about this with a friend of mine about how people who oppose the death penalty are supposed to be kept off juries. Surely the thing to have done was to declare a mistrial for this deliberation phase if a juror shouldn't have been eligible and just get a new jury in?

  2. #232
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
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    Draft Alternatives and if they come back and say "He's stonewalling", then he is removed. I'll go a step further and say Perjury Charges should be leveled since they did indeed lie under oath.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  3. #233
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    DA: Theater shooter's life sentence came down to 1 juror

    By Sadie Gurman
    The Associated Press

    CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A jury’s refusal to sentence Colorado theater shooter James Holmes to die for one of the worst massacres in U.S. history doesn’t mean the public is growing wary of capital punishment, because only a single juror blocked his execution, the lead prosecutor said Friday.

    The lone holdout felt just as strongly that Holmes should get a life sentence as the 11 other jurors believed he should die for the 2012 shooting, District Attorney George Brauchler said, based on prosecution interviews with some of the panel. Twelve people were killed and 70 others injured in the attack.

    “They were surprised, shocked that this juror held this view, and this view, this adamantly,” he told The Associated Press in an interview one week after the jurors said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on each murder count. Their indecision automatically eliminated the death penalty for Holmes, who blamed the attack on schizophrenia and psychotic delusions. He will instead be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

    The holdout hasn’t come forward to speak with prosecutors, but other jurors have said testimony about Holmes’ mental illness persuaded her to show mercy.

    Death sentences in Colorado must be unanimous, and attorneys tell jurors that imposing death is their own personal, moral choice and to respect each other’s decisions.

    The other jurors believed the holdout was strongly in favor of death until the end of their deliberations, when she revealed she was firmly in favor of a life sentence, Brauchler said.

    When it was clear she wouldn’t budge, the jurors took a vote, and the holdout told them that if mental illness hadn’t been a part of Holmes’ defense, she too would have favored a death sentence, Brauchler said.

    “It’s disappointing and frustrating,” he said. “But to extrapolate any more from that one juror’s decision to not impose death is misguided.”

    The same jury swiftly rejected Holmes’ insanity defense, convicting him of 165 felony counts. And later, they swiftly agreed that his mental illness didn’t outweigh the heinousness of the attack, allowing the case to move closer to a death sentence.

    Holmes’ attorneys have not spoken about the case, and Colorado Public Defender Douglas Wilson did not respond to several calls and emails seeking comment.

    The case could have ended the same way more than two years ago, when Holmes offered to plead guilty if he could avoid the death penalty. But Brauchler said he would not accept it, in part because the defense refused to let Holmes be examined by a prosecution psychiatrist and would not provide the spiral notebook where Holmes scribbled detailed plans for the attack.

    The victims and the public might not have ever learned in detail what was behind the shootings had the plea deal been accepted.

    “This guy always intended to survive this, he intended to go to prison for life, and that did not seem to be a just outcome, to give him that without getting to know all the truth of this,” Brauchler said. “The more truth we discovered, the more we realized a truth the community has to come to grips with too, and that’s that mental illness and evil are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist, and in this case they coexisted and evil dominated.”

    Prosecutor Lisa Teesch-Maguire said there were more than 1,200 victims and survivors involved in the case, though just 83 took the stand during the guilt phase. Prosecutors sought their input at every turn, including about whether to seek death, she said. They were almost evenly split. Some favored execution, while others feared the decades of appeals that accompany a death sentence.

    Some favored life because they thought they would never actually see Holmes executed. Colorado has executed only one person in nearly half a century, and just three people sit on the state’s death row. The man closest to seeing his death sentence carried out was granted an indefinite reprieve in 2013 by the state’s Democratic governor.

    The emotional, three-month trial that followed offered a rare look inside the mind of a mass shooter, as most are killed by police, kill themselves or plead guilty. Prosecutors were challenged to weave massive amounts of evidence and an outsized number of witnesses into a powerful narrative that would hold jurors’ attention while continually reminding them of the shooting’s human toll.

    Brauchler and other members of the prosecution team said they had no regrets about their handling of the case.

    “That being the case, it makes sense that if this was not going to result in death it would be because of a juror whose conscience kept them from doing what everyone else thought was the right thing,” Brauchler said.

    http://www.santafenewmexican.com/new...28eeaaae2.html

  4. #234
    Senior Member Member OperaGhost84's Avatar
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    I still blame the Judge. He shouldn't have let the Jury hang after only one day of deliberations. Even then, he should've instructed the Jury that a Verdict of Guilty means his Insanity played no role in the murders and thus, must be disregarded.
    I am vehemently against Murder. That's why I support the Death Penalty.

  5. #235
    Moderator mostlyclassics's Avatar
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    Somebody will be by later with a press release, but here's what Holmes got:

    • 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for first degree murder
    • 70 consecutive 48-year sentences with five years of mandatory parole (Colorado law stipulates the parole)
    • miscellaneous other weapons and explosive device charges

    Ignoring the 12 LWOP sentences, Holmes got 3,318 years — less 1,132 days credit for pre-trial and trial incarceration, Judge Samour was careful to point out.

  6. #236
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Colorado theater shooter James Holmes assaulted in prison

    DENVER (AP) – Officials say an inmate assaulted theater shooter James Holmes and a security officer at the Colorado State Penitentiary.

    Adrienne Jacobson, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, tells The Denver Post that the inmate lunged at Holmes and took a few swings at him while the officer was escorting Holmes through a hallway on Oct. 8. Holmes was not injured.

    Jacobson tells The Associated Press that the 27-year-old inmate accused of attacking Holmes will be disciplined during a hearing inside the prison.

    Holmes is allowed to spend four hours in a day hall. No other inmates are in his cellblock.

    A judge in August sentenced the 27-year-old to life in prison without parole for killing 12 people and wounding 70 others at a movie theater in suburban Denver in July 2012.

    http://kron4.com/2015/10/23/colorado...ted-in-prison/

  7. #237
    Senior Member Member Big Jon's Avatar
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    The Colorado DOC had kept James Holmes' inmate number and information a secret for security reasons but that was recently changed due to media pressure.

    http://coloradofoic.org/after-multip...inmate-number/

    You can now access Holmes' CDOC information: http://www.doc.state.co.us/oss/

    HolmesMugDOC.jpg

    You can put "Holmes" in the last name section and "James" in the first name section. There are two James Holmes and the Holmes you are looking for is 27 years old. Quite a log list of sentences there...even longer than all the CO death row inmates combined.
    Last edited by Big Jon; 11-23-2015 at 10:41 AM.

  8. #238
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Aurora massacre survivors end up owing theater $700K after suing

    DENVER — They had survived brain damage, paralysis and the deaths of their children. For four years, they met in secret as a group. Now, they were finally prepared to settle with the Aurora movie theater that became the site of one of the deadliest massacres in U.S. history.

    Marcus Weaver kept a calm facade, but writhed with anxiety within. His dreams often return him to the theater, the sounds of gunshots and the feeling of his friend’s lifeless body slumped against him. After he escaped, he found a bullet hole in his shoulder.

    On a conference call, the federal judge overseeing the case told the plaintiffs’ attorneys that he was prepared to rule in the theater chain’s favor. He urged the plaintiffs to settle with Cinemark, owner of the Century Aurora 16 multiplex where the July 20, 2012, shooting occurred. They had 24 hours.

    But before that deadline, the settlement would collapse and four survivors of the massacre would be ordered to pay the theater chain more than $700,000.

    The Los Angeles Times corroborated this account with four parties who were present at the settlement conference but declined to be identified because the negotiations were private.

    A separate set of survivors had just suffered a devastating defeat in state court, where a jury of six decided that Cinemark could not have foreseen the events of that night, when James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others in a 10-minute rampage at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

    The survivors, some of whom had two or three attorneys with them, were told that the state case had decided the issue — Cinemark was not liable for the shooting, and U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, who oversaw the federal case, was about to issue an order saying as much.

    The federal lawsuit was effectively over.

    But Jackson wanted the survivors and Cinemark to end the case with a settlement. It was 8 a.m. June 23. For the next eight hours, attorneys for both sides inched closer to a deal.

    At 4 p.m., Cinemark’s attorneys presented a settlement offer. Before it was read, a federal magistrate cornered Weaver to speak with him one-on-one. He asked Weaver to remember the slow pace of change in the civil rights movement, and told him that changing theater safety would also be slow.

    “It was the biggest smack in the face,” Weaver said. “He was basically telling us, you’re right, they’re basically at fault, but there’s justice and then there’s true justice.”

    It wasn’t a good deal, Weaver thought: $150,000 split among the 41 plaintiffs.

    Weaver leaned in close to his attorney.

    “That’s it?” he asked.

    “That’s it,” Phil Hardman replied.

    But the settlement would achieve the one thing Weaver had been pushing for, an acknowledgment that the theater chain would take new measures to protect patrons. Still, something was worrying him.

    “It was the 12th hour, we were all feeling the same way. We all knew they were liable. We knew they were at fault,” Weaver said. “(The settlement) was a slap in the face. But I said, ‘Let’s go for it because it’s better than nothing.’”

    The deal came with an implied threat: If the survivors rejected the deal, moved forward with their case and lost, under Colorado law, they would be responsible for the astronomical court fees accumulated by Cinemark.

    The choice for the survivors was clear, Weaver said.

    “Either seek justice and go into debt, or take that pitiful offering of money and the improved public safety,” Weaver said.

    The plaintiffs and their attorneys all seemed to agree. They decided on a split of $30,000 each to the three most critically injured survivors. The remaining 38 plaintiffs would equally share the remaining $60,000.

    Attorneys with Cinemark drafted a news release to distribute the next day.

    Then one plaintiff rejected the deal.

    The plaintiff, who had been gravely wounded in the shooting, wanted more money than the proposed share of the settlement. The Times is not naming the plaintiff because the plaintiff could not be reached for comment.

    Weaver’s vision briefly blurred. The eight hours they had spent negotiating the deal, the weeks of the failed state court trial, the four years of anger at the theater since the shooting — all of it was for nothing.

    “It was done then,” Weaver said.

    He removed himself as a plaintiff immediately. So did 36 other people. Four plaintiffs remained on the case the next day, June 24, when Jackson handed down the order that Cinemark was not liable for the damages.

    The court costs in the state case were $699,000. The costs in the federal case are expected to be far more.

    “A blind guy in a dark alley could have seen (the state verdict) coming,” Hardman, Weaver’s attorney, said.

    Several plaintiffs and attorneys, including those who would not comment on the settlement negotiations, expressed frustration with the way the state case was handled.

    In that case, a New York attorney representing 27 people paid one expert $22,000 to testify. Cinemark paid five experts $500,000 to testify. Most damaging to their case, the state plaintiffs were not permitted to enter a crucial piece of evidence before the jury — a May 2012 warning from the Department of Homeland Security to theater chains nationwide concerning the potential for a mass-casualty attack on a theater.

    “I strongly think that this guy was trying to make a name for himself and he wanted to get ahead of the curve,” Weaver said. “You’ve got this guy from New York representing people in Colorado who were probably misguided, to be honest.”

    The case put forward in state court was so weak, the federal plaintiffs felt, that a rumor circulated among them that the case was a setup by Cinemark designed to fail.

    “That’s ridiculous,” said Marc Bern, the attorney who argued the state case and is known for representing rescue workers from the Sept. 11 attacks. “We had all the resources possible. The only expert we needed was a security expert.”

    In August 2015, Holmes was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, avoiding the death penalty.

    Weaver, 45, has married and had a child since the shooting, a blue-eyed girl named Maggie. He still goes to therapy, which he said has helped him. The way the case ended, however, will never leave him.

    “Theaters aren’t any safer,” Weaver said. “It’s almost like everything was for naught.”

    http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/new...0k-after-suing

  9. #239
    That is a weird article. It is written so overwhelmingly sympathetic towards the plaintiffs but the bottom line was that they had no case and should not have sued.

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