"Court gets sanity report in Colo. theater shooting," is the AP report by Dan Elliott, via the Denver Post.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the Colorado theater shootings are getting their first look at a long-awaited opinion from a state psychiatrist on whether defendant James Holmes was legally insane when he killed 12 people and injured 70.The report from the state mental hospital is secret, and prosecutors and defense lawyers cannot speak outside court about it because of a gag order. Its contents may be discussed in open court or written about in a motion.
Filed with the court on Friday, the report won't be the final word on Holmes' mental state—that will be up to the jury in Holmes' trial next year.
But it will be a critical piece of evidence as jurors consider whether Holmes should be found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed indefinitely to the state hospital, or convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison or death by lethal injection.
The report will say whether the psychiatrist who led the evaluation believes Holmes meets Colorado's legal definition of insanity: the inability to tell the difference between right and wrong because of a mental disease or defect.
And:
Holmes underwent a mandatory sanity evaluation at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo this summer after he entered his insanity plea.
Earlier coverage of the James Holmes case begins at the link.
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