Jurors to decide fate of Aurora theater shooter
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Sandy Phillips tightens the green scarf around her shoulders, takes a deep breath and tries to relax.
A few feet away sits the man who killed her daughter and 11 others while attending a midnight movie in suburban Denver almost three years ago. Phillips closes her eyes briefly and then refocuses on the 12-member jury that will decide his fate.
"We're sitting here hoping that these 12 people get it," Phillips says in an interview a few minutes later. "There's evil in the world, and he's the example."
Jurors on Wednesday are set to begin deliberating whether to convict James Holmes in connection with those 12 murders at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater as it showed The Dark Knight Rises. If Holmes is convicted, jurors will immediately begin considering whether he should be executed for his crimes. That process could take several more weeks, as defense attorneys would try to save his life.
Jurors could also find Holmes not guilty, or not guilty by reason of insanity, the plea Holmes entered, or find him guilty of lesser charges.
At this point, Phillips says she doesn't really care what happens, as long as Holmes never walks the streets as a free man again. For months, she and other victims' family members have listened to prosecutors lay out how Holmes is alleged to have painstakingly planned and executed his attack.
FAKED PHONE CALL
Working from a blacked-out war room secured with a password-protected door, Holmes bought and practiced with multiple guns, prosecutors showed the court. They described how he stockpiled ammunition and booby-trapped his apartment to draw first responders away from the theater as he attacked. How he faked a cellphone call from inside the theater so he could sneak out and don his armor without arousing suspicion. How he cranked up techno music inside his helmet and gas mask so he wouldn't hear the screams.
Survivors have told of the terror they feared, how they lost loved ones and friends in the darkness punctuated by muzzle flashes from Holmes' three guns. Of crawling away from dead friends, their hands sticky with blood.
DEFENSE STRESSES SCHIZOPHRENIA
Defense attorneys have struggled under the weight of the evidence. They declined to cross-examine any of the victims or survivors and have instead largely focused their efforts on persuading jurors that Holmes was so mentally ill he didn't know right from wrong, or couldn't form the required mental state to be found guilty.
It's been a hard slog.
Psychiatrist Raquel Gur, considered the defense's highest-profile witness, found Holmes to be insane and suffering from schizophrenia. In long rambling answers that have frustrated the judge, Gur suggested that although each individual step was done secretly and logically, Holmes' behavior is that of someone driven to act by a compulsion he couldn't control. Schizophrenia is her specialty.
"Healthy people don't think this way," said Gur, a professor of psychiatry, neurology and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. "It's hard for me and people in general to think how a human being can be like that."
In a notebook Holmes mailed to a psychiatrist hours before the shooting, he wrote that he believed life had no meaning, and neatly penned "why why why" over multiple pages.
She added later: "He was not capable of differentiating between right and wrong. He was not capable of understanding that the people he was going to kill wanted to live."
ILL BUT AWARE?
Last week, District Attorney George Brauchler used Gur's own definitions to show that Holmes may be mentally ill but aware that what he was doing was wrong. Holmes prepared in secret, scoped out the theater in advance, and tinted his car windows so people couldn't see the guns inside.
Two independent psychiatrists appointed by the court found Holmes mentally ill but sane, and Phillips says she believes the nearly 50 days of testimony will persuade jurors that Holmes knew exactly what he was doing. Jurors, who in Colorado are allowed to submit written questions to witnesses, closely questioned Gur about the idea that someone can be mentally ill but not legally insane.
Holmes last week formally gave up his right to testify, the first time in months he has spoken in person to the court. Typically he sits quietly in his chair, occasionally looking around or swiveling his chair. He rarely interacts with his parents seated a few feet behind, and a hidden shackle keeps him in place. Only when video of bloodied victims or video of himself is played does he engage, twisting in his chair to watch the wall-mounted display screen.
JESSICA'S SCARF
Those moments are hard for Phillips to watch, and that's when she pulls the green scarf a little tighter. The scarf belonged to her daughter, Jessica. Phillips wears that green scarf every day. It's a cheap scarf, given Jessica, 24, wasn't wealthy. Neither are Phillips and her husband. They've sold all their belongings, rented out their San Antonio house, and have lived in a used RV for the trial's duration. That scarf is now Phillips' most prized possession, a tangible connection to the daughter she'll never see again.
Phillips is perhaps the most consistent attendee of the court hearings. She wears bracelets bearing the names of two other victims, but court rules require she wear them inside out to not influence the jury. So Phillips hand-washes that scarf each weekend and spritzes it with her daughter's perfume daily. She breathes deep into it when testimony gets too much to bear.
Jurors will likely begin deliberating Wednesday following closing arguments. Court is off the following Monday — because it's the three-year anniversary of the shooting.
"It only takes one for a mistrial. It only takes one for a hung jury," Phillips said as testimony drew to a close last week. "We're just on a frigging ride we can't get off."