Theater shooter may not be executed even if sentenced to die

The time has come for jurors to hear whether James Holmes should be executed for killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater. But even if they choose death, Holmes could spend the rest of his life in prison awaiting capital punishment that never happens. Colorado has executed only one person in nearly half a century, and just three people sit on the state’s death row. The man closest to seeing his death sentence carried out was granted an indefinite reprieve in 2013 by the state’s Democratic governor, who said he had doubts about the fairness of the state’s death penalty system. The same jurors who convicted Holmes of 165 counts of murder, attempted murder and other charges in his July 20, 2012, theater attack must soon decide whether he should pay with his life. The sentencing phase of his trial begins today.

Capital punishment is on life support in Colorado.

Denver defense attorney Craig Silverman

Holmes’ appeals could be even more complex because of his mental illness. Doctors testified that he suffers from schizophrenia. If his mental state deteriorates while he is on death row, he may never be executed, says Michael Radelet, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Part of the issue is Colorado’s uneasy relationship with the death penalty. The state abolished it in 1897, only to restore it in 1901, embarrassed by an outbreak of lynchings. The state’s lower legislative house voted to repeal the death penalty in 1999, but the effort stalled in the Senate. Lawmakers’ attempts to eliminate it again failed in 2009 and 2013.

You have this odd combination here for ambivalence on the part of prosecutors and juries and a statute that permits the imposition of death in most murders.

Sam Kamin, a professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law

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