CENTENNIAL — The psychiatrist who declined to place James Holmes on a mental health hold prior to the Aurora theater shooting started her testimony Tuesday.
WATCH: Dr. Fenton, gunman’s psychiatrist at CU, testifies about initial observations
Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler called Dr. Lynne Fenton — one of the last major witnesses left for the prosecution — late Tuesday morning.
During their roughly half-dozen visits in the months before the shooting, Holmes told Fenton he fantasized about killing people. She ultimately declined an offer to place him on a psychiatric hold at a hospital.
The offer was perhaps the best chance to stop Holmes before he killed 12 people and wounded 70 more inside the Century Aurora 16 movie theater in July 2012. But Fenton, a University of Colorado psychiatrist who stopped seeing Holmes when he dropped out of graduate school, has never publicly explained her reasoning for the decision, so her testimony will offer new insight into questions hanging over the case for nearly three years.
WATCH: Psychiatrist describes gunman’s first discussions of homicidal thoughts
Fenton is a significant witness for both sides. Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, will hope Fenton’s testimony bolsters their argument that Holmes was sane at the time of the attack. Defense attorneys, who argue that Holmes was insane, are expected to vigorously cross-examine Fenton about her former patient’s mental health. Holmes could face the death penalty if convicted.
Brauchler’s announcement came at the end of the trial’s 31st day, a day in which prosecutors began to consolidate a two-month-long case that they have vowed to rest no later than June 23.
They called representatives from outdoor stores where Holmes bought his firearms. In a grainy surveillance video, jurors — and the parents of shooting victims sitting in the audience — saw Holmes hold the assault-style rifle that prosecutors contend he used to shoot 65 of the 76 shots fired inside the theater.
Prosecutors called two more survivors of the attack, including Pierce O’Farrill, who told jurors he was certain he would die when, trying to flee the theater on a blown-apart foot, he stumbled on the stairs and fell to the floor.
WATCH: Psychiatrist investigated “psychotic-level thinking” in theater gunman
“I just laid there,” he said. “I just laid there, and I waited.”
Judge Carlos Samour Jr. dismissed another juror over concerns about impartiality. The juror’s brother-in-law was last week the victim of an apparently random shooting in Denver, and, though the juror said that personal exposure to gun violence wouldn’t bias her decision in the theater case, Samour feared otherwise.
The dismissal leaves a panel of 12 actual jurors and eight alternates. It is not known whether the woman dismissed was originally a juror or an alternate.
Monday also brought deeper insight into the failed romantic relationship that prosecutors argue provided a spark for the attack.
In a series of instant messages released publicly by the court — messages that jurors read on Thursday — Holmes and his then-girlfriend, Gargi Datta, banter about school work and computer games and trade flirtatious innuendos.
The released chats end on March 25, 2012, when Holmes tells Datta he wants to kill people.
“Killing people is too much effort, you’ll end up locked up,” she writes to him.
“That’s why you kill many people,” he responds.
