James Holmes Research Paper

Danielle Amoils

Psychology, Law, and Justice Track 7

April 14, 2016

James Holmes James Holmes was found guilty of killing twelve people and wounding seventy others in a mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado theater on July 20, 2012. The incident occurred at a movie theater, while they were screening the 2012 Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. James Holmes was arrested wearing a gas mask, a “body armor,” and died his hair red to look like “the Joker,” a popular Batman villain.

James Holmes was born in 1987, San Diego, California. Holmes graduated from Westview High School in Rancho Penasquitos, California, in 2006. The Salk Institute of Biological Studies offered him an internship, where he interned that summer . In 2010, he attended the

A week later, he was charged with “24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 counts of attempted murder, as well as two charges related to the possession of serious weapons” (James Holmes- Mass Murderer). Two months later, they wanted to add new charges against him. “In March 2013, Holmes made an offer to plead guilty to the charges in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole” (James Holmes- Mass Murderer). This was a good idea on his part, because he would avoid the death penalty. Unfortunately, the case was moved against him because the prosecutors denied his offer. The accused and the Arapahoe County District Attorney, George Brauchler, thought that James Holmes’s punishment should be more severe. “It’s my determination and my intention that in this case, for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death,” Brauchler said, according to NBC

One can see, that this case was very unusual and not an ordinary case, resulting in a delay in the case. One of the prosecutor’s, Brauchler, was for the death penalty and publicly wrote about it an Op-Ed in the Denver Post. Holmes was not mentioned, but he “wrote of capital punishment as an important tool of justice” (NBC- Justice is Death). “Repealing the death penalty would result in acts similar to those in Newtown, Connecticut, or the acts of Tim McVeigh being punished no differently than a single murder of one gang member by another,” the prosecutor wrote (The Denver