CENTENNIAL — Two independent psychiatrists have now said on the witness stand exactly what prosecutors in the Aurora theater shooting trial hoped they would: that the gunman was capable of knowing right from wrong when he committed the attack.
But they also told defense attorneys something that they wanted to hear: that James Holmes was delusional and struggling with mental illness.
Legal experts say those findings could weigh heavily on jurors if they find Holmes guilty and are then forced to decide whether he should be executed.
On Monday, Dr. Jeffrey Metzner echoed what the case’s other court-appointed psychiatrist earlier told jurors, in explaining that he found the defendant met the criteria for legal sanity despite having a serious mental illness.
Over more than a week of testimony, Metzner and the previous psychiatrist, Dr. William Reid, have inundated jurors with personal information about Holmes, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the July 2012 attack that killed 12 and injured 70.
Jurors now know Holmes’ favorite books to read as a kid and the meal that he cooked for his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. They know the name of his childhood dogs and how he cried when the dogs were put down. They know the type of music he was listening to when he began shooting into the crowd.
Legal experts say these personal details could be as critical to the jury’s decision on a possible death sentence as the psychiatrists’ findings on sanity could be during the trial’s guilt phase.
“The more human and humane James Holmes seems,” said Denver defense attorney and legal analyst Dan Recht, “the harder it will be for a jury to vote to execute.”
Metzner ticked through a list of events suggesting Holmes knew it was morally wrong to kill people: He told his girlfriend he wanted to do something evil; he cranked the techno music in his earbuds to drown out his victims’ screams and make the shooting more impersonal; he asked police later if any children were hurt.
Metzner said Holmes surrendered easily to police because he determined it was the best way to ensure he stayed alive.
But, as with the first psychiatrist, Metzner also said the shooting wouldn’t have happened if Holmes had been mentally healthy. Metzner diagnosed Holmes with schizoaffective disorder, a combination, in this case, of schizophrenia and a major depressive disorder. He said personal setbacks likely combined with mental illness to form a delusion for Holmes that killing people would increase his self-worth.
“I think he was floundering,” Metzner said. “…I think he was struggling with who he was and what was going to happen to him.”
Metzner spoke with Holmes for three-and-a-half hours longer than Reid. But Monday’s testimony showed why Holmes’ 22 hours of recorded interviews with Reid may make the bigger impression.
Jurors watched almost every minute of Reid’s interviews — a process that kept Reid on the witness stand for six days. Metzner’s testimony nearly finished in a single day. Metzner did not video or audio record his interviews, meaning Reid’s videos still represent the most detailed look jurors will get at Holmes.
Exactly what the lasting impact of those videos is, though, depends on how jurors view Holmes. He was unemotional and short in his answers, often responding in overly literal ways or saying, “I don’t know.”
To prosecutors, the videos show a man indifferent to the consequences of his actions. To defense attorneys, they show a man bound up by his mental illness and the medications being used to treat it, a subject they questioned Metzner about.
“I had problems obtaining information from Mr. Holmes,” Metzner said, “because of the nature of his mental illness.”
Colorado jurors must consider “capacity to appreciate wrongfulness” as a possible mitigator in a death penalty sentencing phase. They must look at a defendant’s mental health as a possible reason not to execute him.
Michael Perlin, a professor at the New York Law School and a national expert on the insanity defense, said juries often find the opposite. He argues that, because jurors have difficulty understanding mental illness that pushes someone to murder, they are more likely to view a mentally ill defendant as dangerous and deserving of execution.
“We can’t predict,” he wrote in an e-mail of the psychiatric interviews’ impact on Holmes’ trial. “Mental illness is supposed to be a mitigating factor in the death penalty but there are many examples of it being used, improperly, as an aggravating one.”
Recht disagreed, saying jurors will be less inclined to impose the death penalty the more they know about a defendant’s mental struggles. Still, he agreed with Perlin on one thing: The information jurors are learning about Holmes now will be important, but it’s too early to tell how it might play out in a possible penalty phase.
“The significance of the videos, in the end, is going to have to wait for another day,” he said.
