Deliberations begin in Colorado theater shooting case

CENTENNIAL, Colo. – One after the other, their faces flashed on an overhead screen: the aspiring sports broadcaster, the caring dad, the smiling 6-year-old girl a prosecutor described as “forever our kindergartner.”

Photos of the 12 people who died in the Colorado theater shooting were the last images jurors saw before they started deliberating Wednesday over whether the gunman, James Holmes, was legally insane when he opened fire on a crowded midnight movie premiere.

Within 30 minutes, the group of nine women and three men requested a whiteboard. Later, they asked Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. for an index to the mounds of evidence left for them in the jury room. But Samour denied the request, saying the two sides wouldn’t agree on how things should be labeled.

“I anticipated this because there are thousands of pieces of evidence, but unfortunately they have to do it the hard way, which is just sort of dig through,” Samour told the attorneys.

In closing arguments Tuesday, District Attorney George Brauchler kept the focus on the shooting’s heavy toll on victims, weaving their stories into a larger narrative that tried to show Holmes was legally sane when he carried out the attack almost three years ago.

Defense attorney Daniel King presented Holmes, now 27, as a kind of victim himself, of schizophrenia so consuming he was unable to tell right from wrong when he slipped into the auditorium and started shooting, injuring another 70 before his gun jammed and he surrendered. King showed jurors images of Holmes looking dazed and sullen with fiery orange hair after the July 20, 2012, attack.

Defense attorneys are asking for a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, which would send Holmes to the state mental hospital for an indefinite commitment. Prosecutors say Holmes should be convicted of murder and executed.