The judge overseeing the Aurora movie theater murder case on Friday denied defense attorneys’ request to reconsider calling some of their motions “frivolous.”
In March, Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour canceled two weeks of hearings on arguments related to the death penalty. Defense attorneys have filed several motions challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty in Colorado.
After reading five defense motions concerning the death penalty, Samour said he didn’t find it necessary to hold the hearings.
Soon after, the judge denied those motions and called four of them frivolous. He noted that the Colorado Supreme Court had already rejected similar arguments in previous cases.
In a motion filed Thursday but made public on Friday, attorneys for James Holmes — who faces the death penalty for killing 12 and injuring dozens more in a 2012 attack at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater — asked Samour to reconsider his characterization and criticized the judge for doing so in a public filing.
“When the Court wrongly denigrates defense counsel in its orders for filing ‘frivolous’ motions, it improperly undermines the important role of defense counsel in our adversarial system and incorrectly portrays defense counsel as wasting the Court’s time,” the filing read.
But Samour shot back on Friday, and said none of the motions he denied in March sought to change existing death penalty laws and they failed to present legitimate arguments.
