JUDGE UNSEALS REPORTS ON JAMES HOLMES
Findings of CU psychiatrist, two court doctors had been given to jury
Aurora theater shooter had no history of violence, campus psychiatrist wrote in weeks before 12 were killed.
In the weeks before a University of Colorado graduate student killed 12 and injured 70 in an Aurora movie theater, a campus psychiatrist wrote that he had been hostile toward her but had made no threats and had no history of violence, according to the doctor’s notes obtained by The Denver Post through a legal petition.
In handwritten notes from May 1, 2012, Dr. Lynne Fenton wrote that convicted shooter James Holmes was silent and sullen but said he was “good” when asked how he was doing. The psychiatrist also asked Holmes about how he reacted after she mistakenly wrote the wrong last name on his prescription.
“He very reluctantly says his ‘fists’ (the q’s) & punching me in the eye ‘violence — is that what you needed to hear,’ ” Fenton wrote of his response to her questioning.
Fenton’s notes and the reports of two other psychiatrists who examined Holmes were made public for the first time late last week when former 18th Judicial District Chief Judge Carlos Samour unsealed them. Samour unsealed the documents after The Denver Post filed a motion to release them. The release was the last official act of Samour as a district court judge in Arapahoe County, where he presided over the theater shooting trial in 2015. On Monday, he was sworn in as a Colorado Supreme Court justice.
The other documents released included sanity evaluations written by Dr. Jeffrey L. Metzner and Dr. William H. Reid, psychiatrists who evaluated Holmes in the months leading up to his death-penalty trial. Holmes had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and the two evaluations were meant to prove whether or not he was competent to stand trial.
“It’s a good outcome for the public to see records that played a prominent role in this capital murder case and that may have indeed informed the jury in deciding not to sentence Holmes to death,” said attorney Steve Zansberg, who represents The Denver Post.
The reports were discussed during weeks of testimony, and all three doctors appeared in court to discuss their findings. The documents also were given to the jury, but they were never publicly released. The Post petitioned the court, and Samour agreed with the newspaper’s arguments that the documents should be made public.
“The justice system, which is one of the bedrocks of this nation’s democracy, cannot survive if the public loses trust in it, and the public does not trust that which is concealed from it,” Samour wrote.
Samour said he originally suppressed the reports during the trial because he wanted to protect the jury pool when it came to the most significant issue in the case — Holmes’ mental health.
Samour determined that Holmes lost his patient-doctor privacy privileges when he argued a sanity defense. The judge permited the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to redact some portions of the reports to protect confidential testing information in sanity exams.
Fenton’s notes were of particular concern because she had chosen not to place a mental health hold on Holmes, which could have prevented the theater shooting. Fenton was sued over that decision. But the lawsuit filed by Chantel Blunk, widow of Jonathan Blunk, was dismissed in 2016, according to court records.
Efforts to reach Fenton on Monday were unsuccessful.
In her notes, Fenton repeatedly expressed concern over the shooter’s homicidal thoughts but lack of a willingness to address specifics with her. Holmes also told the psychiatrist that if he revealed more details she would “lock him up.”
“Angry that I won’t tell him my philosophical ideas of purpose of life ‘I’ve told you all mine. Are you just a pill-pusher?'” she wrote.
Ultimately, Fenton consulted a second psychiatrist, notified the university’s threat assessment team and contacted Holmes’ mother against his wishes. But she concluded he did not meet the criteria for mental health hold. Though he planned to drop out of graduate school, Fenton noted that the student mental health service would be happy to continue treating him even if he no longer had health insurance.