James Holmes Guilty In Colorado Movie Theater Shooting

A jury has convicted James Holmes on murder charges for killing 12 people when he opened fire at a Colorado movie theater in 2012. 

Jurors deliberated for a day and a half over whether Holmes was a cold, calculating killer or a man in the grips of a psychotic breakdown when he opened fire in a crowded movie theater almost exactly three years ago.

In closing arguments, District Attorney George Brauchler kept the focus on the shooting's heavy toll on victims, weaving their stories into a larger narrative that tried to show Holmes was legally sane when he carried out the attack.

Defense attorney Daniel King presented Holmes, now 27, as a kind of victim himself, of schizophrenia so consuming he was unable to tell right from wrong when he slipped into the auditorium and started shooting, killing 12 people and injuring another 70 before his gun jammed and he surrendered. King showed jurors images of Holmes looking dazed and sullen with fiery orange hair after the July 20, 2012, attack.

Both sides tried to help jurors make sense of thousands of pieces of evidence and more than 250 witnesses who testified in the 11-week trial.

Dozens of victims and family members were in the courtroom for closing arguments, and some wept as Judge Carlos A Samour Jr. read the names of the dead and wounded while he gave the jury his instructions. Sandy Phillips wore a green scarf that belonged to her daughter, Jessica Ghawi, who was killed.

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