A Colorado jury will continue deliberating whether to return a death sentence against James Holmes, convicted this year of killing 12 people and wounding 70 more when he opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora.
Judge Carlos Samour read the jurors’ verdict one-by-one on Monday, saying each of 12 deceased victims’ names before reading the verdict related to their murder.
Jurors had the option of deciding if the mitigating factors of the crime outweighed certain aggravating factors, which would have allowed them to sentence Holmes to life in prison without the option of parole. They will now move on to the third phase of sentencing.
Jurors reached the verdict in the second phase of the case on Monday, after less than a half a day of deliberation, Reuters reported. Deliberations began on Thursday, after a panel of nine men and three women determined that there were aggravating factors to Holmes’s crimes, a finding necessary to sentence a defendant to death in Colorado.
Holmes has already been convicted of 165 counts against him, including 24 counts of murder, attempted murder and a weapons charge. In the second phase of sentencing, which Monday’s verdict represents, defense attorneys attempted to convince jurors that mitigating factors such as mental illness should spare Holmes from the death row.
Prosecutors are reportedly planning to call up to 15 victims of the shooting in the third phase, when jurors begin considering how to punish Holmes for his crimes.
