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The judge in the case of accused Aurora theater shooter James Holmes has ruled that Colorado’s insanity plea laws are constitutional.
In doing so, Judge Carlos Samour rejected arguments by Holmes’s attorneys that the laws are unconstitutional partly because they bar a defendant from calling his own experts to testify about his mental condition at trial if he does not first cooperate with a court-ordered mental examination.
Read the judge’s order below.
Holmes is charged with killing twelve people and injuring seventy more in a shooting during the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises at the Aurora Century 16 movie theater on July 20. He will be back in court on Friday, at which time the judge is expected to decide whether to accept Holmes’s tendered plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. In March, a prior judge entered a not-guilty plea on Holmes’s behalf after his attorneys said they were not yet ready to enter a plea.
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Order Regarding Outstanding Issues
More from our Aurora Theater Shooting archives: “James Holmes’s attorneys, prosecutors argue about the word ‘cooperate.'”
Follow me on Twitter @MelanieAsmar or e-mail me at melanie.asmar@westword.com
