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Home » News » Crime

July 30. 2012 10:54PM

Holmes faces 142 charges in Colorado massacre


Colorado shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes sits with public defender Tamara Brady during his first court appearance last week in Aurora, Colo. Holmes was formally charged on 142 counts yesterday, including 24 counts of murder. (REUTERS FILE)
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Prosecutors on Monday filed 142 charges — including 24 for first-degree murder — against James Holmes, the former graduate student who is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 58 during a shooting spree at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater early July 20.

In addition to first-degree murder, Holmes was charged with 116 counts of attempted murder, one count of using a deadly weapon in commission of a violent crime and one count of possession of explosive devices. The murder charges carry a minimum penalty of life in prison and a maximum of death.

For each of the 12 people killed, Holmes faces two charges of first-degree murder, one for acting after deliberation and with intent, the other for acting with malice and having “an extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Holmes was charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder for each of the 58 injured.

The charging document also lists, for the first time, the names of all the victims of the attack.

Holmes, 24, has been in police custody for 10 days, but prosecutors had delayed charging him as investigators and police continued their probe. Police have described the shooting rampage, which occurred during a midnight showing of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises,” as a methodical attack that took months of planning, during which Holmes purchased weapons and stockpiled other materials.

At Monday's hearing, Colorado District Court Judge William Blair Sylvester also heard several motions, including those from Holmes' attorneys, who want access to documents related to the investigation. Prosecutors said they have thousands of pages of police reports and long lists of witnesses.

Tamara A. Brady, a public defender representing Holmes, said she and others have yet to see much of that information. “We are operating simply on things we have heard and things we assume,” she said. Prosecutors agreed to get Holmes' attorneys much of their documentation in the next few days.

Sylvester also tentatively set aside a week in November for a preliminary hearing.

In the 45 minutes that Holmes was in the courtroom, he appeared dazed. A light-colored beard had grown on his cheeks since he last appeared in court.

Holmes was emotionless, and his eyes seemed heavy. He mostly sat back in his chair, sometimes swaying side to side during the proceedings. His gaze often drifted to one of the eight officers stationed in the courtroom, the attorneys or judge. At one point, he stared at the ceiling. At another, he closed his eyes as if dozing off. He spoke only once, when Sylvester asked him whether he understood that his attorneys had waived a time restriction for his preliminary hearing.

“Yes,” Holmes said.

Sylvester set Aug. 16 to hear a motion to determine whether information contained in a package that Holmes allegedly sent to a University of Colorado at Denver psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, before the shooting, is privileged. News reports described the notebook as a journal of sorts that included crude drawings of a mass gun attack. It is in dispute when the package arrived at the university, but it was seized by police July 23. Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers said in court papers that the parcel was found unopened.

Holmes' attorneys say that Holmes was Fenton's patient while he was a student in the university's doctoral program in neuroscience and that the leaking of information about the package violated his privacy and right to due process and a fair trial. Holmes' mental health is expected to be at the heart of the case.

Hours before the hearing was set to begin, reporters set up camp in the parking lot of the district courthouse, about 15 miles south of the Century 16 movie theater where the massacre occurred. At Holmes' last hearing, cameras were allowed in the courtroom, and commentators later picked apart the suspect's behavior and facial expressions.

For Monday's hearing, Sylvester barred cameras and all electronic equipment from the courtroom.

Sylvester also has imposed a gag order on the attorneys and law enforcement agencies involved in the case, sealed court records and barred the university from releasing relevant public records to the media. The Washington Post and other news organizations are contesting the judge's decision to seal the records filed by the prosecution and defense.

An attorney representing a group of media organizations — “too large to name” — spoke during Monday's hearing. Sylvester set a hearing for Aug. 9 on the issue of unsealing the court records.

Dozens of witnesses and relatives of victims, along with a few victims themselves, attended the hearing, either sitting in the courtroom where they could stare down Holmes or a nearby room where they could watch the proceedings on a television screen. Afterward, prosecutors and victim advocates met with the group to explain what was to come and answer questions, according to several people who were there. They also tried to manage expectations and warned the group that there was a long process ahead.

“We want them to charge as much as they can. . . . But if you want him convicted and put away, you don't want to charge eight-hundred-thousand things,” said a 25-year-old man who was at the theater that night but escaped unharmed. He asked that his name not be used to protect himself from the wave of media inquiries that have deluged others. “I wasn't personally injured, but there's so much mental trauma that has to be dealt with,” he said.

Those at the courthouse Monday included an apparent victim who was transported from the courthouse in a wheelchair, her left arm and left leg bandaged. The mother of Rebecca Wingo, a 32-year-old mother of two who was killed, was there. There also were several relatives of Ashley Moser, 25, who was seriously injured in the shooting and whose daughter, 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, was killed.

Many of those who attended the hearing declined to speak with the media stationed outside the courthouse, but a few stopped to share why they wanted to be at the proceedings.

“It was very important to come today to see him for what he was,” said Mary Ellen Hansen, Moser's aunt and a retired principal. Unlike the previous hearing, which Hansen said she also watched, Holmes seemed more alert and aware of what was happening Monday, she said. “I felt anger and I felt resentment that anyone could take away someone's life for just going to the movies ... He had a persona of evilness to him.”

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