US gets verdict in theater massacre trial

World Today

July 23, 2012 file photo AFP PHOTO / FILES / POOL /RJ SANGOSTI

For almost three months jurors have been trying to decide how an American former grad student, named James Eagan Holmes, should be charged and punished for committing, at the time, the worst mass shootings in American history back in July of 2012. Holmes entered a crowded movie theater at a midnight screening of the Batman film The Dark Knight, and sprayed the crowd with bullets from multiple guns he had on his person, while launching smoke bombs in a dramatic fashion, killing multiple people and injuring others. Nearly 15 years before, back in April of 1999, Colorado was home to the worst high school massacre in America when teens opened fire killing fellow students in a suburban Denver school. Colorado still, to this day, has lenient gun laws in comparison to many parts of the U.S.
Reports out of the U.S. today about the Holmes verdict are focusing on the facet of the case pointed towards Holmes’ sanity and say that the jury in the trial are down to the details where they’ll decided if the defendant is guilty by way of insanity. That will determine if he goes into state prison or a state mental health facility, for life.

CCTV America’s Hendrik Sybrandy has been tweeting from the location of the trial in Colorado. Follow him on twitter @hsybrandy