Colorado movie gunman sentenced to 12 lifetimes and 3,318 years

CENTENNIAL, Colorado (Reuters) – Condemning movie massacre gunman James Holmes to 12 life sentences and the maximum 3,318 years in prison for his rampage in a midnight screening of a Batman film, a Colorado judge said on Wednesday that evil and mental illness are not mutually exclusive.

“It is the court’s intention that the defendant never set foot in free society again ... If there was ever a case that warranted the maximum sentences, this is the case,” Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour said.

“The defendant does not deserve any sympathy.”

Survivors and relatives of those killed clapped and cheered as Samour then ordered deputies to remove Holmes from his courtroom, and the gunman was led away in shackles.

The 27-year-old was found guilty last month of murdering 12 people and wounding 70 after donning a helmet, gas mask and body armor, then opening fire with a semiautomatic rifle, shotgun and pistol.

The jury did not reach a unanimous decision on whether Holmes should be executed. That meant the former neuroscience graduate student, who had pleaded insanity, got a dozen automatic life sentences with no parole for his attack on the packed screening at the Century 16 multiplex in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Samour still had to sentence Holmes on scores of attempted murder counts, and an explosives charge he received for rigging his apartment with homemade bombs.

Condemning the shooter to the longest term he could issue, the judge said Holmes set out to kill “as many innocents as possible” after deciding to “quit” in life.

He said whatever illness Holmes may have suffered, there was overwhelming evidence that a significant part of his conduct had been driven by “moral obliquity, mental depravity, anger, hatred, revenge, or similar evil conditions.”