Nine thousand jury summonses for the Aurora movie theater murder trial hit the mail Thursday, the largest jury call for a single case in Colorado history.
The postage alone for the summonses was estimated to cost nearly $3,500, said Rob McCallum, a spokesman for the Colorado Judicial Branch. Judge Carlos Samour, who ordered the unprecedented call, has said such a big jury pool is necessary to find 12 jurors and 12 alternates who can hear the long-awaited, highly publicized and months-long trial and then decide the case fairly at the end.
Jury selection is scheduled to start on Jan. 20, with potential jurors coming in waves over a couple of weeks to the Arapahoe County courthouse. The prospective jurors will hear a brief introduction from Samour, fill out a lengthy questionnaire and then return home. Those selected for the next phase of jury selection will be called back starting in February.
Opening statements in the trial likely won’t happen until late May or early June.
McCallum said the summonses going out for the theater shooting case have no special wording on them, meaning prospective jurors won’t know for sure they’ve been called for the case until they arrive for jury duty. McCallum said summonses for other cases are also currently in the mail.
People on the jury rolls in Arapahoe County have a roughly 1-in-50 chance of receiving a summons for the theater shooting case — odds so great that, during a hearing this week, Samour agreed to a special process for victims or witnesses who receive a summons to be excused from service without having to show up at court. Without the process in place, prosecutor Rich Orman told Samour of the victims and witnesses, “it’s going to cause them a lot of stress.”
Also on Thursday, Samour denied a defense request that would have blocked victims from talking about how the shooting affected them prior to the jury rendering a sentence.
James Holmes faces 166 counts of murder, attempted murder and other offenses in connection with the attack on the Century Aurora 16 movie theater. He could be sentenced to die if convicted.
