Accused Colorado gunman sought help for mental illness: lawyer

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (Reuters) - Accused Colorado gunman James Holmes, charged with murder over a shooting rampage last month at a movie theater in a Denver suburb, has a "mental illness" and tried to get help before the shooting, his defense attorney said in court on Thursday.

Holmes' public defender, in a hearing on media access to court files in the case, repeatedly made references to his client's unspecified mental illness, giving the first clear sign that Holmes' lawyers might be considering an insanity defense.

"He tried to get help with his mental illness," Daniel King said of his client, a 24-year-old former neuroscience graduate student at the University of Colorado who faces 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder.

Holmes is accused of bursting into a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the Denver suburb of Aurora and opening fire in the crowded theater, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others.

Holmes, who seemed to have not shaved for days, appeared in court on Thursday wearing maroon prison garb and shackled at his hands and ankles, with his dyed hair fading to pink in some places from its original reddish-orange.

He seemed alert but disinterested in his third appearance in a Colorado courtroom since the July 20 mass shooting. He mostly stared straight ahead and did not talk to his lawyers.

"Mental illness is the only possible defense available in this case. It is hardly a whodunit," Craig Silverman, a former chief deputy district attorney in Denver who now practices law privately, told Reuters.

"By saying it repeatedly in open court, Holmes' lawyers provide the sound bite that will be the basis of the defense," he said. "It wasn't just for the court to hear but it was for the people in the courtroom and for people in the press to report."

Court papers filed by defense attorneys two weeks ago said Holmes had been a patient of the medical director for student mental health services on campus before he filed paperwork to drop out of the competitive graduate program.

That psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, reported Holmes to a campus threat assessment team and a campus police officer over concerns about her patient, according to media reports.

Lawyers for Fenton and the campus police officer declined to comment to Reuters on those reports. The university has also declined to comment on the reports but said it had hired a former federal prosecutor to probe its dealings with Holmes.

As in many states, mental health care providers in Colorado must warn authorities of potential violent behavior only when a patient has communicated a serious threat of imminent physical violence against a specific target.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY

Judge William Sylvester said he would consider a request by 20 media organizations to unseal and make public documents detailing the murder case against Holmes, and would issue a written ruling later.

Lawyers representing news organizations sought the release of the papers in a written motion that said sealing them "undermines our nation's firm commitment to the transparency and public accountability of the criminal justice system."

In the motion, lawyers for the media outlets, including The New York Times Co., The Associated Press, The Denver Post, and CBS News, argued that the U.S. Constitution and state case law requires a presumption of openness. Thomson Reuters is not a party to the motion.

In most court cases, documents are available to the public.

Both prosecutors and defense lawyers objected, saying that it was too early to open the file because the investigation was still ongoing.

"The harm, judge, is very real with the release of the file at this point," defense attorney King said.

Media lawyer Steven Zansberg argued that the decision to close the bulk of the file made it difficult for the public to understand what happened during the shooting, and why.

The media has recently been successful in getting some documents unsealed in the case of Jared Loughner, who was charged last year in a deadly shooting spree that killed six people and gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

As the Holmes case gets further along, there may be other parties who express concerns over what is sealed. Attorneys representing families of the victims may insist that certain photographs from the crime scene not be released, for example.

Holmes is being held without bond and in solitary confinement at the Arapahoe County jail.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Anthony Boadle)

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Accused Colorado shooter has "mental illness," defense attorney says

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (Reuters) - Accused Colorado shooter James Holmes, charged with murder over a shooting rampage last month at a movie theater in a Denver suburb, has a "mental illness," his defense attorney said in court on Thursday.

Holmes, who is accused of opening fire at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" in the suburb of Aurora, was present during a hearing in which a judge was considering a request by 20 media organizations to unseal documents related to his case.

Twelve people died and 58 others were wounded in the shooting rampage.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Writing by Mary Slosson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Shootings in Sikh temple and Colorado: Which crime is worse?

Last Sunday, Wade Michael Page killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before being wounded by a police officer and taking his own life. Two days later, Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty to killing exactly the same number of people at an Arizona shopping mall last year.

Who committed a worse crime? At first glance, it seems like a ridiculous question: One murderer’s victims are as dead as the other’s. But under US state and federal “hate crime” laws, the answer is probably Page. And that might be the most ridiculous thing of all.

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An avowed white supremacist, Page most likely targeted his victims because they were of a different color or perhaps mistook them as Muslims. All but three states now have laws providing for enhanced penalties when a crime is motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice. So does the federal government, which broadened its hate-crime law in 2009 to include attacks based on sexual orientation.

Page, then, would be judged more harshly than Mr. Loughner – whose goal was to murder former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords – and possibly than James Holmes, who allegedly killed 12 moviegoers at a Colorado theater last month.

We still don’t know what may have motivated Mr. Holmes, whose victims seem to have been chosen at random. And that’s the key distinction here. If you deliberately aim to kill or injure a certain kind of person, we will penalize you more than if your targets are haphazard and arbitrary.

Why? In America, after all, we’re free to say and think whatever we want; we criminalize behavior, not belief. So how can we interdict some behaviors more strongly because of the belief that seemingly lies behind them?

Here defenders of hate-crime statutes invoke the principle of harm, which is deeply inscribed in criminal law: The greater the injury resulting from a given act, the more we punish it. So extra penalties for hate crimes reflect not their perpetrators’ noxious opinions – which are constitutionally protected – but rather the far-reaching effects of their crimes.

Or so the Supreme Court said in a 1993 decision upholding Wisconsin’s hate-crime law, under which Wade Page would probably have been prosecuted. Citing briefs by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Anti-Defamation League, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted that bias-motivated crimes “inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims” and “incite community unrest.”

Rehnquist went on to quote the English jurist William Blackstone, whose “Commentaries” had an enormous influence on American law: “It is but reasonable that, among crimes of different natures, those should be most severely punished which are the most destructive of the public safety and happiness.”

OPINION: Why is it OK to to be prejudiced against Mormons?

The same idea underscored federal hate-crime measures, which grew steadily after the 1998 murders of James Byrd and Matthew Shepard. Byrd was an African-American dragged to his death by whites who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan; Shepard was gay, lured out of a bar and beaten to death.

“Hate crimes are a form of terrorism,” the late Sen. Edward Kennedy told Congress in 1998. “They have a psychological and emotional impact which extends far beyond the victim.”

He was right, of course. Consider the Wisconsin murders and the toll they have taken on America’s Sikh community, which was already reeling from a long series of racist episodes. Four days after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, a turban-wearing Sikh was killed at his gas station by an assailant who apparently mistook him for a Muslim. Since then, the Washington-based Sikh Coalition has documented more than 700 incidents of anti-Sikh violence and intimidation.

But do these kinds of acts do greater harm to their targets than attacks that are not overtly motivated by prejudice? I doubt it. If anything, so-called random shootings terrorize a wider swath of people.

Indeed, these shootings remind us that anybody in America can be a target. Regardless of race or ethnicity – or sexual orientation – any one of us can be shot to death by a Jared Loughner or a James Holmes. They do not discriminate. And that is every bit as destructive to “public safety and happiness” – to quote Blackstone – as any racist attack.

So it’s time to get rid of hate-crime laws, which assume that an attack motivated by bigotry is somehow worse than one impelled by anger, greed, or anything else. Tell that to the parents, spouses, and children of the people who died in Arizona and Colorado.

THE MONITOR'S VIEW: Wisconsin shooting: a call to counter extremist fear

Ostensibly, hate-crime measures aim to safeguard minorities. But they thereby blind us to lone and anonymous shooters, who don’t advertise their anger or humiliations on racist websites or anywhere else. That’s the biggest danger right now, to all of us. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).

ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR: Why is it OK to to be prejudiced against Mormons?

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Colorado man arrested for bringing gun to theater

Police arrested a man Sunday night after he carried a firearm into a a Thorton, Colorado theater nine days after the Aurora shootings, Kieran Nicholson of the Denver Post reports.

James Mapes, 48, believes that he was merely exercising his constitutional right to bear arms when he was arrested. “I’ve had no problems in the past. I’ve never had police take my gun from me in the nine years I’ve had the permit,” Mapes said.

Mapes recalled that he heard a woman near him call the police and report that there was a man carrying a gun in the theater. Police proceeded to evacuate the theater and detain Mapes. Upon being detained, he was disarmed, handcuffed, and arrested. Mapes has since been released after being cited and given a summons.

Police arrested Mapes for violating municipal ordinace 38-237 which states, “It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly possess on or about the person or within such person’s immediate reach any dangerous weapon.” However, Colorado is an open-carry state, and its laws supersede those of Thornton. Mapes stated in a Monday interview that he had received a concealed-carry permit in 2003 from the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado.

In a police photo, Mapes appears wearing a dark shirt that reads “Liberalism,” but the bottom of the shirt is cut off in the photo.  The shirt bears a resemblance to a Zazzle t-shirt that reads “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” In an interview with Denver Westword, Mapes says his choice of shirt was not politically motivated. He goes on to say that he did not set out to be arrested, so his attire was unintentional.

In March, Mapes wrote a response to an editorial in the Denver Post that criticized the Colorado Supreme Court for overturning the University of Colorado at Boulder’s ban on students carrying concealed weapons on campus. He wrote at the time, “Just one concealed-weapon holder in a classroom where a random criminal attempts to shoot the occupants could and would reduce the casualties, as they would either take out the offender or at least distract them while others managed to get distance from the shooter.”

On July 20, James Holmes allegedly shot and killed twelve people at a showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora. Holmes was the only armed person in the theater, which had a gun-free policy.

The night of those attacks, Mapes was attending the Batman movie’s premiere just 17 miles away in Thornton. He was carrying his gun then, as well.

Unlike the Aurora theater, the Thornton location does not have a gun-free policy.

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Colorado shooting: Suspect is charged, no word on death penalty

James Holmes had his second court appearance Monday, as prosecutors formally filed the charges against him.

Mr. Holmes, accused of opening fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater this month, killing 12 people and injuring 58, was charged with 142 counts, including 24 counts of first-degree murder, 116 counts of attempted murder, one count of possession of an explosive device, and one count of a sentence enhancer for a crime of violence.

He was charged twice for each of individuals killed. Colorado has several different classes of murder charges. One set of the charges refers to the fact that Holmes allegedly shot after deliberation. The second set accuses him of killing “under circumstances evidencing an attitude of universal malice manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life generally."

IN PICTURES: Aurora, Colo. shooting aftermath

Holmes also waived his right to a preliminary hearing within 35 days.

The judge, William Sylvester, set a date for a preliminary hearing on Nov. 12. The next court hearing in the case will be Aug. 9, when the court will address a motion filed by several media outlets to unseal records in the case. A court order has kept virtually all case documents sealed, and a gag order has limited what attorneys, police officers, and others can say about the case.

Holmes made his first court appearance a week ago; this time, cameras and electronic equipment were barred from the room.

The charges were hardly a surprise, since Holmes’s involvement in the shooting, and the nature of the crimes, seem clear. At this point, most of the speculation centers on whether Colorado prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Holmes, and whether his defense team will be able to mount an insanity defense.

Capital punishment in Colorado exists, though it’s seldom used. In the past 45 years, one person has been executed in the state: Gary Lee Davis, in 1997, for rape and murder. (Between 1972 and 1984, the state had no death penalty.) Three people now sit on death row.

But it also seems likely that prosecutors will seek the death penalty in Holmes’s case.

“If James Holmes isn’t executed,” former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman told Reuters last week, “Colorado may as well throw away its death penalty law.”

To qualify for the death penalty, Colorado law says, one of 17 aggravating factors must be present in addition to first-degree murder.

Holmes “satisfies many of them,” says Sam Kamin, a law professor at Denver University. The factors include killing multiple people, killing in an especially heinous or cruel way, lying in wait for the victim, and creating a grave risk of death for one or more people in addition to the victim.

“What we don’t know yet, and can’t know, is what the case for mitigation will be,” adds Professor Kamin. The murders and aggravating factors will have to be balanced against that case – most likely centered on Holmes’s mental state, he says.

Conflicting reports have emerged in the past 10 days about Holmes’s mental state, and what information about the attack he may have mailed to a University of Denver psychiatrist.

Court papers last week confirmed that Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, at the university, but it’s unclear what she was treating him for. News outlets also claimed that Holmes had mailed a package to Dr. Fenton that contained a sort of journal describing plans for the attacks in detail.

However, prosecutors have said that much of the reported information was inaccurate, though they have confirmed that the notebook exists. It’s unclear exactly what the notebook contains, and when the package was received – whether it had been sitting in the mailroom since July 12, as Fox News originally reported, or whether it arrived there the Monday after the shooting.

Holmes’s defense team has filed a motion seeking to determine whether prosecutors or police were responsible for leaking information about the package to media. That had been expected to be discussed at Monday’s court hearing, but was postponed.

Evidence already appears to exist that the shooting was premeditated and that Holmes spent months planning it. In particular, authorities say that Holmes began buying bullets and ballistic gear online four months ago, and bought four weapons at Colorado stores in May and June.

Such planning may make an insanity defense more difficult to prove. Ultimately, though, the success of such a defense in Colorado would rest on whether Holmes’s lawyers can prove that he was unable to tell right from wrong when he committed the attack.

“We don’t know what was going on inside the mind of what is clearly a disturbed individual,” says Kamin, adding that prosecutors will need to show that Holmes is sane enough to stand trial and was sane enough at the time of the crime to be held accountable for it. They will also need to address any possible mitigating factors in his past.

“The evidence of [Holmes’s] involvement is without question,” Kamin says. “The case is going to ultimately come down to the mental state of this defendant.”

IN PICTURES: Aurora, Colo. shooting aftermath

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Colorado shooting suspect was seeing psychiatrist: court filing

(Reuters) - The man accused of killing 12 people and wounding 58 others in a shooting rampage at Denver-area movie theater last week was under the care of a psychiatrist, court papers released on Friday said.

The information came in a filing to the Arapahoe County District Court from defense attorneys for James Holmes, the 24-year-old former graduate student who police say opened fire last Friday on a packed showing of movie "The Dark Knight Rises."

The attorneys were seeking the contents of a package Holmes sent to Dr. Lynne Fenton.

"Mr. Holmes was a psychiatric patient of Dr. Fenton, and his communications with her are protected," the filing said.

(Reporting By Dan Burns; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Colorado judge bans cameras in hearing when shooting suspect charged

(Reuters) - The judge in the case of the man accused of Friday's shooting rampage at a Colorado movie theater on Tuesday ruled that no cameras or electronic recording equipment will be allowed at next week's hearing when formal charges will be filed.

Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester issued the written ruling in response to a request by Denver-area media for expanded media coverage of the July 30 hearing for James Holmes.

The public defenders appointed as Holmes' defense attorneys had objected to the request, according to court papers. Monday's initial appearance for Holmes had been televised over the objection of his attorneys.

Holmes will be charged formally on July 30.

(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Jackie Frank, Gary Crosse)

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Colorado Shooter: Insane or Just Plain Evil?

Around 9:30 a.m. on Monday, a shackled James Holmes was ushered by deputies into the courtroom of Arapahoe Superior Court Judge William Sylvester. His hair dyed orange, his eyes glassy, the man accused of murdering 12 people in a Colorado movie theater sat about 20 feet from the victims’ family members. During the 10-minute court proceeding, Holmes looked at times like he was in a catatonic state. When Judge Sylvester asked if he understood the charges being brought against him, he sat silent while his public defender Daniel King answered for him.

Holmes’s bizarre behavior quickly raised questions about whether the 24-year-old was truly insane or was just acting the part. At a press conference outside the court building, 18th Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers said the death penalty could be a possibility for Holmes, whose bloody rampage at the Century 16 theater on July 20 has dominated headlines and left this quiet city reeling. A decision about the death penalty “is months down the line,” said Chambers. Legal experts say Holmes’s public defenders, King and Tamara Brady, will most likely present an insanity defense. Kind and Brady couldn’t be reached for comment.

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Insane or not, Holmes will most likely never see the light of day again. “This isn’t a whodunit case,” said Professor Louis Schlesinger, an expert in psychology and mass violence at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Even before a court determines whether Holmes is insane, it must decide if he is competent to stand trial. In all likelihood, say experts, the answer will be yes. “The threshold for a person to be incompetent is that the person has to be unaware of the nature of the legal proceedings,” said Mimi Wesson, a law professor at the University of Colorado–Boulder who says defendants are rarely deemed incompetent. This means the person “doesn’t understand that he’s been charged with a crime and is unable to assist his lawyers. He can’t talk to them, communicate to them, can’t remember anything, and is extremely out of contact with reality.”

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Meanwhile, Holmes’s defense team will likely have him examined by a state-appointed expert to determine if he is insane. That would include establishing a history of psychosis or extreme mental illness.

“The standard is very high,” for proving insanity in Colorado, said Barry Latzer, a professor of government at John Jay. “You have to show not only that he was psychotic but that at the time of the crime, as a result of the psychosis, he literally didn’t know what he was doing was morally or legally proper. It’s going to be hard to find that he didn’t know what he was doing.”

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Jared Loughner mounted an insanity defense after he killed six people and injured 14 others, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords at a Tucson, Ariz., shopping center in January 2011. But questions were raised after police found he surfed the Web about execution by lethal injection, conditions of solitary confinement, and past assassins before he went on his rampage. There was also evidence that he stalked Giffords before shooting her. Loughner pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a hearing to determine if he’s fit to stand trial.

Holmes, who had been enrolled in a neuroscience doctoral program, allegedly spent four months building up an arsenal of guns and ammunition before he went on his killing spree. Before he arrived at the theater, he booby-trapped his apartment with trip wires and IEDs. He also reportedly applied for a membership with at least one shooting range. Prior to the shooting, Holmes allegedly posted a profile on the website Adult Friend Finder profile asking would-be suitors, “Will you visit me in jail?”

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If the defense can prove that Holmes was insane at the time of the shooting, the death penalty would be taken off the table. That could be a difficult task given the prosecutorial prowess of Chambers, a successful prosecutor whose office is responsible for the convictions of two of the three people on Colorado’s death row.

Chambers will be pitted against Tamara Brady, a veteran public defender. In 2006, she represented Jose Luis Rubi-Nava, who was accused of killing his girfriend by dragging her behind a car with a tow strap. Rubi-Nava avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

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If Holmes makes it to trial he will be one of the few mass murderers in recent years to do so. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 15 of their classmates at Columbine High School in 1999, and Seung-Hui Cho, who shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, all committed suicide immediately after their shooting rampages.

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