She is a University of Colorado psychiatrist who saw Holmes five times before the shooting and grew concerned that he was having “paranoid delusions” and “psychotic-level thinking”. Defense attorneys have indicated they plan to call Lynne Fenton to the stand again. They could also see jailhouse video of Holmes running head first into walls and falling backward off his bed in a November 2012 episode that sent him to a hospital. Jurors could hear from some of the 20 doctors who treated Holmes after his arrest.
“The defense is going to say, ‘There’s no question he was able to inflict a ton of carnage here, but do we give society’s harshest sentence to someone who is severely mentally ill?’” Kendall said. Studies show that jurors often enter a penalty phase with their minds made up about an appropriate sentence, even though they are instructed not to do so.
#JAMES HOLMES TRIAL#
The defense case also is critical because jurors can use information they hear in the verdict phase if the trial advances to a sentencing phase. Most states and the federal system place that burden on defendants. In Colorado, prosecutors have the burden of proof in insanity cases. They will try to show jurors that Holmes’s mental decline was far greater than the state doctors knew, in part because those doctors analyzed him much later after the attack. Holmes’s attorneys will call at least two mental health experts of their own who studied Holmes closer to the time of the shooting on 20 July 2012 and declared him insane.
He defends clients in a variety of intellectual property matters. The insanity defense is successful in only about 25% of felony trials in which it is raised nationally, and the odds are worse in a high-profile homicide. James (Jim) Holmes is an experienced trial attorney and litigator, representing major media and entertainment entities, as well as major insurance carriers insuring media and entertainment entities. If jurors agree, Holmes would be committed to a state mental hospital indefinitely. But defense attorneys say Holmes suffered schizophrenia and was in the grips of a psychotic episode so severe it rendered him unable to tell right from wrong – Colorado’s standard for an insanity verdict. Two state psychiatrists who examined Holmes in the months and years after the shooting concluded he was sane. “While the harms have been overwhelming, there’s just no way to disassociate all that carnage from the fact that his control system is all screwed up.” “What the defense is going to try to do is say, ‘This would have never happened but for the intervention in this guy’s life of very serious mental illness,’” said George H Kendall, who has handled other high-profile death-penalty cases. Legal experts say the coming days may be defense attorneys’ best chance to convince jurors he should not be executed, even if they decide he should be convicted. Their goal is not only to keep Holmes out of prison, but also to keep him alive. Without the scores of victims on their side, Holmes’s defense plans to present its evidence in less than a quarter of the time taken by prosecutors.
0 kommentar(er)
