The trial of James Holmes, who’s been charged with 166 counts in connection with a 2012 massacre in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater that left 12 dead and 70 more injured, began on Monday. Attorneys for both sides offered opposing takes on Holmes’ state of mind when the killings took place.
District attorney George Brauchler painted Holmes as “cool” and “meticulous,” noting that two state-appointed psychiatrists had said that Holmes “was sane when he carried out the massacre,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Four hundred people filed into a boxlike theater to be entertained and one came to slaughter them,” Brauchler said in court on Monday. “The man that came there that night, covered head to toe in armor to protect himself from injury, brought with him four weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He is in the court with us today. He’s seated right over there … He tried to murder a theater full of people to make himself feel better.”
Defense attorney Daniel King, meanwhile, contended that his client “was insane” at the time of the July 2012 rampage at a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” adding that Holmes’ mind “had been overcome by a disease of the brain that had plagued him and pursued him for years,” ABC News reports.
“There’s ample evidence that he’s not faking anything,” King said.
Holmes, 27, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Should he be found guilty, it must then be determined if he will receive the death penalty.
During Monday’s opening arguments, Brauchler drew the jury’s attention to an interview between Holmes and a doctor, during which Holmes characterized the wounded as “collateral damage,” adding, “I only count fatalities.”