XPost: aus.politics.guns, alt.politics.usa.republican, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: scalar@cogeco.ca   
      
   Colorado theater shooter James Holmes was found guilty Thursday   
   on all 165 counts against him in the chilling 2012 attack on   
   moviegoers at a midnight Batman premiere that left 12 people   
   dead and dozens of others wounded.   
      
   Jurors swiftly rejected defense arguments that the former   
   graduate student was insane and driven to murder by delusions.   
      
   The 27-year-old Holmes, who had been working toward his Ph.D. in   
   neuroscience, could get the death penalty for the massacre.   
      
   It took an hour for Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr.  to read the 165   
   guilty counts in front of a crowded and emotional courtroom.   
   Family members sobbed as their loved ones' names were read and   
   several jurors cried as each verdict was announced.   
      
   Meanwhile Holmes, dressed in a blue shirt and beige khakis,   
   stood impassively as Samour read charge after charge, each one   
   punctuated by the word "guilty."   
      
   Holmes' parents also displayed little emotion  —  although at   
   one point Holmes' mother was seen praying.   
      
   The initial phase of Holmes' trial took 11 weeks, but it only   
   took jurors about 12 hours over a day and a half to decide all   
   165 charges. The same panel must now decide whether Holmes   
   should pay with his life.   
      
   The verdict came almost three years after Holmes, dressed head-   
   to-toe in body armor, slipped through the emergency exit of the   
   darkened theater in suburban Denver and replaced the Hollywood   
   violence of the movie "The Dark Knight Rises" with real human   
   carnage.   
      
   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. Several died   
   shielding friends or loved ones.   
      
   The trial offered a rare glimpse into the mind of a mass   
   shooter, as most are killed by police, kill themselves or plead   
   guilty.   
      
   Prosecutors argued that Holmes knew exactly what he was doing   
   when he methodically gunned down strangers in the stadium-style   
   theater, taking aim at those who fled. They painted him as a   
   calculated killer who sought to assuage his failures in school   
   and romance with a mass murder that he believed would increase   
   his personal worth.   
      
   He snapped photos of himself with fiery orange hair and scrawled   
   his plans for the massacre in a spiral notebook he sent his   
   university psychiatrist just hours before the attack, all in a   
   calculated effort to be remembered, prosecutors said.   
      
   The prosecution called more than 200 witnesses over two months,   
   more than 70 of them survivors, including some who were missing   
   limbs and using wheelchairs. They recalled the panic to escape   
   the black-clad gunman.   
      
   The youngest to die was a 6-year-old girl whose mother also   
   suffered a miscarriage and was paralyzed in the attack. Another   
   woman who was nine months pregnant at the time described her   
   agonizing decision to leave her wounded husband behind in the   
   theater to save their baby. She later gave birth in the same   
   hospital where he was in a coma. He can no longer walk and has   
   trouble talking.   
      
   That Holmes was the lone gunman was never in doubt. He was   
   arrested in the parking lot as survivors were still fleeing, and   
   he warned police he had rigged his nearby apartment into a   
   potentially lethal booby trap, which he hoped would divert first   
   responders from the theater.   
      
   His attorneys argued that Holmes 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   
   worried psychiatrists in the months before the shooting.   
      
   Defense lawyers tried to present him as a once-promising student   
   so crippled by mental illness that he couldn't reveal his   
   struggles to anyone who might have helped. They called a pair of   
   psychiatrists, including a nationally known schizophrenia   
   expert, who concluded Holmes was psychotic and legally insane.   
      
   But two state-appointed doctors found otherwise, testifying for   
   prosecutors that no matter what Holmes' mental state was that   
   night, he knew what he was doing was wrong.   
      
   Jurors watched nearly 22 hours of videotaped interviews showing   
   Holmes talking in a flat, mechanical tone about his desire to   
   kill strangers to increase his self-worth. Using short,   
   reluctant answers, he said he felt nothing as he fired, blasting   
   techno music through his earphones to drown out his victims'   
   screams.   
      
   Prosecutors showed jurors Holmes' spiral notebook, where he   
   scribbled a self-diagnosis of his "broken mind" and described   
   his "obsession to kill" since childhood. The pages alternate   
   between incoherent ramblings and elaborate plans for the   
   killings, including lists of weapons to buy and diagrams showing   
   which auditoriums in the theater complex would allow for the   
   most casualties.   
      
   Jurors saw an investigator's video of the shooting's aftermath.   
   It showed bodies wedged between rows of seats and sprawled   
   across aisles amid spent ammunition, spilled popcorn and blood.   
      
   The foreman was identified as a Columbine survivor, who said his   
   experience with the 1999 school shooting tragedy would make him   
   an expert juror in this case.  He also said he went to a  school   
   dance with one of the victims of the shooting and at one point   
   was friends with both shooters.   
      
   Jurors return to court to begin the sentencing phase of the   
   trial Wednesday, two days after the third anniversary of the   
   attack.   
      
   During the sentencing phase, Holmes' attorneys will present so-   
   called mitigating factors that they hope will save his life.   
   Those will probably include more evidence of mental illness and   
   a sympathetic portrayal of his childhood. Prosecutors will   
   present so-called aggravating factors in support of the death   
   penalty, including the large number of victims.   
      
   http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/16/jury-reaches-verdict-in-   
   colorado-theater-shooting-trial-james-holmes/?intcmp=trending   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)