Shooter knew what he was doing, doctor says
CENTENNIAL, Colo. — A state- appointed psychiatrist who examined James Holmes two years after his attack on a Colorado movie theater said Thursday that whatever he suffered from that night, he knew what he was doing.
Dr. William Reid told jurors he believes Holmes knew the consequences when he opened fire at a midnight Batman movie premiere, killing 12 people, wounding 58 and injuring 12 others in the ensuing chaos.
Reminded that his task was to determine whether Holmes was legally sane that night, Reid said, “whatever he suffered from, it did not prevent him from forming intent and knowing the consequences of what he was doing.”
District Attorney George Brauchler had told jurors in his opening statements that Reid as well as another stateappointed psychiatrist who examined Holmes concluded he was legally sane during the attack.
But before Reid took the stand Thursday, Judge Carlos Samour reminded prosecutors of the strict parameters both sides had agreed to before trial, limiting what Reid can say about Holmes’ sanity and keeping jurors from seeing parts of his videotaped 2014 examination.
Earlier this week, prosecutors showed jurors what Holmes wrote in his notebook before the attack, such as an estimate on the police response (“3 mins”) and diagrams of the theater complex, down to which auditorium had the fewest exits where victims might escape.
With detailed maps and cramped handwriting, Holmes sketched out a chilling list of choices: mass murder or serial murder; attack a theater or an airport; guns, bombs or biological warfare.
The graduate student in neuroscience sought to diagnose himself, listing 13 ailments including schizophrenia and “borderline, narcissistic, anxious, avoidant and obsessive compulsive personality disorder.”
“So, anyways, that’s my mind,” he wrote. “It’s broken. I tried to fix it.”
The defense has said Holmes suffers from schizophrenia and was so warped by psychosis that he did not know right from wrong — Colorado’s standard for an insanity verdict.
The notebook is a serious blow to the defense because it “speaks to his appreciation of wrongfulness,” said Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has worked on sanity cases but isn’t involved in the Holmes trial.