The Political Freakshow

Aurora Theater Shooting Suspect Charged With 24 Counts of Murder and 116 Counts of Attempted Murder

Colorado prosecutors on Monday charged a former neuroscience graduate student with 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder in the shooting rampage at the midnight showing of the new Batman movie.

The Aurora shooting suspect appeared just as dazed as he did in his first court appearance last week, but at one point exchanged a few words with one of his attorneys in the packed courtroom.

The breakdown of the charges was not immediately clear.

The attack at “The Dark Knight Rises” left 12 people dead and 58 others injured. After his arrest, police said they found that his apartment was booby trapped. Among the charges Monday was one count of possession of explosives.

Legal analysts expect the case to be dominated by arguments over the defendant’s sanity.

Unlike the first court appearance July 23, Monday’s hearing was not televised. At the request of the defense, District Chief Judge William Sylvester barred video and still cameras from the hearing, saying expanded coverage could interfere with Holmes’ right to a fair trial.

Last week, Sylvester allowed a live video feed that permitted the world its first glimpse of the shooting suspect. With an unruly mop of orange hair, the suspect appeared bleary-eyed and distracted. He did not speak.

Attorneys also were arguing over a defense motion to find out who leaked information to the news media about a package the 24-year-old allegedly sent to his psychiatrist at the University of Colorado Denver.

Authorities seized the package July 23, three days after the shooting, after finding it in the mailroom of the medical campus where the perpetrator studied. Several media outlets reported that it contained a notebook with descriptions of an attack, but Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers said in court papers that the parcel hadn’t been opened by the time the “inaccurate” news reports appeared.

Security was tight for Monday’s hearing. Armed officers were stationed on the roof of both buildings at the court complex, and law enforcement vehicles blocked entrances to the buildings.

Investigators said the accused shooter began stockpiling gear for his assault four months ago and bought his weapons in May and June, well before the shooting spree just after midnight during a showing of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.” He was arrested by police outside the theater.

Analysts said that means it’s likely there’s only one main point of legal dispute between prosecutors and the defense.

“I don’t think it’s too hard to predict the path of this proceeding,” said Craig Silverman, a former chief deputy district attorney in Denver. “This is not a whodunit. … The only possible defense is insanity.”

Under Colorado law, defendants are not legally liable for their acts if their minds are so “diseased” that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong. However, the law warns that “care should be taken not to confuse such mental disease or defect with moral obliquity, mental depravity, or passion growing out of anger, revenge, hatred, or other motives, and kindred evil conditions.”

Experts said there are two levels of insanity defenses.

The suspect’s public defenders could argue he is not mentally competent to stand trial, which is the argument by lawyers for Jared Loughner, who is accused of killing six people in 2011 in Tucson, Ariz., and wounding several others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner, who has pleaded not guilty to 49 charges, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is undergoing treatment at a Missouri prison facility in a bid to make him mentally fit to stand trial.

If the shooters’ attorneys cannot convince the court that he is mentally incompetent, and he is convicted, they can try to stave off a possible death penalty by arguing he is mentally ill. Prosecutors will decide whether to seek the death penalty in the coming weeks.

The suspect was not expected to enter pleas on Monday.

He ultimately could verbally enter a plea to the anticipated dozen first-degree murder charges, or his attorneys could enter it for him. Prosecutors may file multiple counts of attempted first-degree murder and other charges against the suspect, who booby trapped his apartment with the intent to kill any officers responding there the night of the theater attack, Aurora police said.

Sam Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver, said there is “pronounced” evidence that the attack was premeditated, which would seem to make an insanity defense difficult. “But,” he said, “the things that we don’t know are what this case is going to hinge on, and that’s his mental state.”

Friends in Southern California, where the suspect grew up, describe him as a smart, sometimes awkward youth fascinated by science. He came to Colorado’s competitive neuroscience doctoral program in June 2011. A year later, he dropped out shortly after taking his year-end exam.

Sylvester has tried to tightly control the flow of information about Holmes, placing a gag order on lawyers and law enforcement, sealing the court file and barring the university from releasing public records relating to the shooter’s year there. A consortium of media organizations, including The Associated Press, is challenging Sylvester’s sealing of the court file.

On Friday, court papers revealed that the suspect was seeing a psychiatrist at the university. But they did not say how long he was seeing Dr. Lynne Fenton and if it was for a mental illness or another problem.

The University of Colorado’s website identified Fenton as the medical director of the school’s Student Mental Health Services. An online resume listed schizophrenia as one of her research interests and stated that she sees 10 to 15 graduate students a week for medication and psychotherapy, as well as five to 10 patients in her general practice as a psychiatrist.

Authorities said the accused murderer legally purchased four guns before the attack at Denver-area sporting goods stores - a semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and two pistols. To buy the guns, he had to pass background checks that can take as little as 20 minutes in Colorado.

One development over the weekend brought more grief. A woman who was critically wounded and whose 6-year-old daughter was killed suffered a miscarriage because of the trauma, her family said Saturday. Ashley Moser’s daughter, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, was the youngest person killed in the attack.

Chambers’ office announced Monday that Lisa Teesch-Maguire, a former legal director of the Rocky Mountain Victim Law Center, had been appointed a victims’ rights advocate in the case.