CENTENNIAL — Precisely 1,011 days after the attack on the Century Aurora 16 movie theater, the trial that will decide what is justice for one of America’s most notorious killers begins on Monday.
The reckoning starts just after noon, when prosecutors and defense attorneys take turns giving their opening statements to the newly seated jury and three years of secrets begin to spill out in an Arapahoe County courtroom during a four-hour span.
Until now, the case has hung in a kind of cocoon.
Key evidence was kept sealed. Investigators remained mum.
To the public outside, the most basic understanding of the attack remained elusive. Calculated killings or acts of insanity? Preventable tragedy or unforeseeable horror? A man who deserves treatment or execution?
Over four or five months, the trial of The People of the State of Colorado vs. James Eagan Holmes will finally provide some, but perhaps not all, answers.
“Whether he is legally sane or legally insane, we will have a much better understanding of why something like this happens,” said Dr. Neil Gowensmith, who teaches at the University of Denver and works at the university’s Forensic Institute for Research, Service and Training. “We will understand if there was a mental disorder. We’ll have a much better understanding of what he is thinking and what he is believing.”
Those answers carry massive consequences.
Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to all 166 murder, attempted murder and other charges in the attack. His attorneys maintain he was “in the throes of a psychotic episode when he committed the acts,” but prosecutors said the crime was so intentionally heinous it deserves the death penalty. Two court-ordered psychiatric exams that could determine the verdict were withheld from the public.
Twelve people were killed. But, while the case remains pending, there has been no legal determination whether they were victims of murder.
Seventy people were injured during the shooting on July 20, 2012. Perhaps as many as 400 people were inside the theater watching the midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” when the attack began. Those impacted by the tragedy — family members, police officers, firefighters, emergency room doctors — rippled to thousands. More than 1,400 documents were filed with the court for the case, and the assembled evidence piled up hundreds of thousands of pages and terabytes of data.
Multiple civil lawsuits against the theater’s owner hang on the evidence tied up in the trial. Several survivors of the attack have said they hope the trial will be cathartic.
“The trial is just a steppingstone to getting this all behind us,” Marcus Weaver, who was wounded in the attack, said earlier this year.
But Gowensmith and others said the trial may not be able to answer the tragedy’s ultimate question: Why? Even prosecutors have hinted at that, telling jurors during jury selection that an answer about motive for the shooting may remain an “itch that isn’t scratched.”
“We see these common threads through mass public shooters and it describes the individual who commits this type of violence,” said Grant Duwe, a researcher with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who studies mass killings. “But I don’t think it necessarily explains why they do what they do.”
The trial will reveal the case’s most closely guarded details — information withheld so as to ensure that jurors would hear about it for the first time in court:
• What did Holmes say to multiple doctors who have examined his mental health since the shooting, and what did the doctors decide about his sanity?
• What did University of Colorado officials know about Holmes before the attack, and what could they have done to prevent it?
• What did Holmes write in a notebook that he mailed to his former psychiatrist at CU the day before the shooting?
Even smaller details will come up for reassessment. In the hours following the attack, news stories across the world reported that Holmes, with hair dyed red, told officers after his arrest that he was the Batman villain The Joker. But court documents and testimony have never substantiated that. Was it even true?
What makes the theater shooting trial unique among murder trials is both its size and its subject.
Among people who commit public mass shootings, more than half either kill themselves or are killed at the scene, Duwe said. A smaller percentage survive their attack and then pursue a legal defense all the way to trial.
That makes the theater shooting trial a rare opportunity for the public and researchers to understand and learn how to prevent mass shootings. But its rarity also limits its lessons’ reach.
Duwe said mass killings make up a small percentage of all murders. People who commit mass killings are disproportionately mentally ill, but mental illness itself doesn’t predict that someone is predisposed to carrying out a mass killing.
“It makes it very difficult to predict with a relatively high degree of accuracy who is going to commit this type of violence,” Duwe said. “That’s not to say we should throw our hands up and give up.”
Scrutiny of the accused, though, is only one aspect of the trial, which relatives of those killed hope will help spread stories of victims’ heroism. For the people most deeply affected by the shooting, the trial isn’t just about punishment for one; it’s also about remembering the 12 who were lost and seeking justice for their deaths.
Earlier this month, the parents of Jessica Ghawi, who was killed in the theater, packed up their home in San Antonio in preparation for a move to Colorado. Sandy and Lonnie Phillips plan to live at least temporarily in the state during the trial, so that they can attend every day.
“We feel we need to be there for the trial,” Sandy Phillips told television station News 4 San Antonio. “It’s important to us, at the end of the day, if we’ve been in court that we remind everyone that this is about the victims and survivors of that horrific night and not about the killer.”
Victims’ relatives are likely to be called to testify at trial. So, too, will survivors of the shooting, who must present evidence of their injuries in order to substantiate the attempted murder charges filed in their names.
Many are approaching the trial with trepidation.
“Once that opening day starts,” said Weaver, who plans to be in court for opening statements, “and you get out of the car, you don’t know how it’s going to feel.”
The nearly three years since the shooting have been a time of transition.
Survivors of the shooting have gotten married and had children. The district attorney’s office filed updated lists of charges to reflect their new names.
Couples who went to the movies together that night have split up.
For some of the youngest survivors of the shooting, the interim has lasted practically their entire lives. Ethan Rohrs was 4 months old at the time of the attack, carried out of the theater in his mother’s arms. He’s now old enough to walk into court on his own.
Survivors and victims’ family members have formed support groups. They’ve met with the district attorney’s office to review their testimony. They’ve asked the judge to protect them from viewing graphic images of their loved ones.
To them, the trial is a blessing and burden, a chance to heal and to confront. It’s the end of one trauma and the beginning of another.
“All that stuff you’ve been coping with and trying to deal with for two-and-a-half, three years,” Weaver said. “Now it’s here.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johningold
