CENTENNIAL — On the seventh day of the trial, Sandy Phillips could rest her voice no longer.
“With each description of what row they found a body or what position they found a body, we know who that person is,” she said outside court Wednesday of the ongoing testimony in the Aurora movie theater shooting trial. “And it makes sitting through the testimony extremely difficult.”
In the three years since her daughter, Jessica Ghawi, was shot to death in the attack on the Century Aurora 16 theater, Phillips has found solace in having a voice. In remembrance of her daughter, she has advocated for greater restrictions on gun sales. She has championed the rights of victims.
And, now, she has taken on the trial as another type of memorial to Jessica. She has attended every day, quietly sitting through varied testimony about bombmaking chemicals and the defendant’s academic record and officers’ race to the hospital in hopes of saving Jessica’s life.
“I kept trying to hold her airway,” Aurora police Officer Aaron Blue testified on the trial’s fourth day, as Phillips wiped tears from her eyes in the audience. “She kept gagging for breaths. It took forever.”
“We’re here for the duration,” Phillips said after court let out Wednesday. “We’re not going to let anybody forget that it’s about the victims and the survivors.”
Wednesday’s testimony spent much of the day focused on the defendant, James Holmes, who is charged with killing 12 people and trying to kill 70 more on July 20, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and he could face the death penalty if convicted.
Continuing a thread from Tuesday, two more professors who taught Holmes at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus spoke of how their student seemed bright in class but unmotivated in laboratory assignments. Slides from PowerPoint presentations that he gave about neuroscience research were admitted into evidence. The professors, Achim Klug and Mark Dell’Acqua, said they had concerns about his performance in the spring of 2012 but also hoped he could still turn his academic career around.
Next came the testimony of four members of the Arapahoe County sheriff’s bomb squad, who said they searched for — but ultimately did not find — explosives at the theater after the attack. Prosecutors played a video taken by the bomb squad’s robot as it wheeled around the outside of the theater. Defense attorneys objected at least once to the relevance of the information.
But robots and PowerPoints aside, there were reminders throughout the day that the trial is fundamentally human.
Twice on Wednesday, jurors told Judge Carlos Samour Jr. they realized only this week that they know survivors of the theater attack — after seeing those survivors called to testify. One juror said he and his wife struck up a friendship with survivor Alex Espinoza and his wife amid the long jury selection process — without Espinoza knowing the man was a potential juror or the juror knowing Espinoza had been in the theater. The two couples made plans to go out together in the next few weeks.
Samour ordered the juror to cancel those plans and cut off contact with his new friends until the end of the trial. Both jurors were allowed to remain on the panel after saying they wouldn’t let their personal relationships affect their judgment.
Prosecutors also continued to weave the testimony of the attack’s survivors throughout their case. Over the previous six days of trial, the survivors’ testimony has been most wrenching for families watching in the audience — a nonstop loop of vivid accounts about fear, pain and grief inside the theater.
“You get through the day and you’re exhausted,” Phillips said. “You go home. You try to eat something. You go to bed. And you try to prepare yourself as best you can to go through it the next day.”
Two survivors testified Wednesday. The second, Caitlin Peddicord, told of how she went to the movie with a big group of friends, including Alex Teves and his fiancée, who now goes by Amanda Teves. When the shooting started, another friend pushed Peddicord to the ground. She heard the glass on the projection booth behind her shatter. She heard a chair blow apart.
“After that,” Peddicord said, “I heard Amanda scream Alex’s name.”
In the audience, Teves’ mother, Caren, sat next to Phillips. As a picture of her slain son appeared on courtroom screens, she wept in silence.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johningold
