Jury Convicts Colorado Theater Shooter of Murder

Jury Convicts Colorado Theater Shooter of Murder
FILE - This June 4, 2013 file photo shows Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes in court in Centennial, Colo. On Thursday, July 16, 2015, a jury found Holmes guilty of murder in the methodically planned attack. Andy Cross/The Denver Post via AP, Pool, File
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CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Jurors convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes on Thursday in the chilling 2012 attack on defenseless moviegoers at a midnight Batman premiere, rejecting 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 that left 12 people dead and dozens of others wounded.

Jurors took about 12 hours over a day and a half to review all 165 charges. The same panel must now decide whether Holmes should pay with his life.

Holmes stood impassively as Judge Carlos Samour Jr. read charge after charge, each one punctuated by the word “guilty.”

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.

Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theatre massacre, carries a T-shirt memorializing the twelve people killed in the attack, outside the Arapahoe County District Court following the day of closing arguments in the trial of theater shootings defendant James Holmes, in Centennial, Colo., Tuesday July 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Sandy Phillips, whose daughter Jessica Ghawi was killed in the 2012 Aurora movie theatre massacre, carries a T-shirt memorializing the twelve people killed in the attack, outside the Arapahoe County District Court following the day of closing arguments in the trial of theater shootings defendant James Holmes, in Centennial, Colo., Tuesday July 14, 2015. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley