Lawyers for the Aurora movie theater gunman say they will appeal an order requiring a second psychiatric evaluation to the Colorado Supreme Court, as the judge in the case rejected further defense efforts to toss out the death penalty as a possible punishment.
In a Tuesday court filing that was made public Wednesday, defense attorneys say they will appeal the exam ruling within 30 days. As a result, Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour further delayed the start of the second exam and canceled court hearings scheduled for early May. Samour had ordered the exam be completed by July 11.
Also, in three orders made public Wednesday, Samour rejected defense arguments that the death penalty process is unconstitutional. Samour said all three motions lacked merit and had been rejected previously in other cases. One motion argued that the process for selecting jurors in a death penalty case results in a jury inherently biased against the defendant. Another motion argued that jurors likely wouldn’t follow the court’s instructions when deciding punishment.
“The Court is … confident that the jury will be able to understand and follow all of its instructions,” Samour wrote.
Samour also rejected a defense request that jury selection be video-recorded.
The attack on the Century Aurora 16 movie theater in July 2012 killed 12 people and injured dozens in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. Gunman James Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, making the court-ordered psychiatric evaluations pivotal to the case. Samour this year ordered Holmes to undergo a second evaluation after finding the first exam was deficient in some ways.
The results of the first exam have not been released publicly, but prosecutors disagreed with at least one of its conclusions.