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| 'Justice is death' for alleged shooter in Batman rampage, prosecutor says - NBCNews.com Posted: 01 Apr 2013 09:17 AM PDT MSNBC's Thomas Roberts gets the latest from the trial of James Holmes from NBC's Leanne Gregg and attorney Gary Lozow. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Holmes. By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News Prosecutors said Monday that they will seek the death penalty for James Holmes, the man accused of gunning down 12 people and wounding 70 at a Batman movie last summer in Colorado. George Brauchler, the district attorney for Arapahoe County, said he made the decision after speaking with more than 800 victims and family members. "It's my determination and my intention that in this case, for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death," he said at a hearing. Brauchler had already rejected an offer from the defense to let Holmes plead guilty and serve a life sentence. Judge William Sylvester of the Colorado circuit court entered a plea of not guilty for Holmes last month after his lawyers said they were not ready to plead. The judge left the door open for lawyers to mount an insanity defense. Sylvester on Monday handed the case to a new judge, Carlos Samour. Holmes' trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 5. The two cases in the legal case fought in public last week. After the defense made its offer, Brauchler said in a filing that Holmes' lawyers were only trying to generate sympathy for their client. The only conclusion, the prosecutor wrote, "is that the defendant knows he is guilty, the defense attorneys know he is guilty and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane." Brauchler wrote an Op-Ed in The Denver Post over the weekend defending the death penalty. Colorado legislators have considered banning it. He did not name Holmes but wrote of capital punishment as an important tool of justice. "Repealing the death penalty would result in acts similar to those in Newtown, Conn., or the acts of Tim McVeigh being punished no differently than a single murder of one gang member by another," the prosecutor wrote. "Each murder after the first would be a freebie." Injection is the method for capital punishment in Colorado. The state has executed only one inmate since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That execution was in 1997.  R.J. Sangosti / Pool Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes listens at his arraignment March 12. Holmes' lawyers have said that jailers determined he was a danger to himself and needed a mental evaluation, and that he was held for several days in a psychiatric ward, sometimes in restraints. He surrendered to police within minutes of the July 12 shooting rampage at a midnight screening of the movie "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo., a suburb of Denver. At his first court appearance, Holmes had stark, red-orange hair and wore a blank stare. He has since appeared more stable and natural-looking. He showed up in court last month with a bushy beard. The hearing Monday was set to begin at 11 a.m. EDT. Legal observers have pointed out that the two sides could still reach a plea deal later, even as prosecutors seek to put Holmes to death. NBC News producer John Boxley, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was originally published on Mon Apr 1, 2013 8:17 AM EDT |
| Texas county 'on alert' over deaths of prosecutor, wife - USA TODAY Posted: 01 Apr 2013 09:11 AM PDT The district attorney's office in Kaufman, Texas, was closed Monday morning and the courthouse was under tight security following the weekend shooting deaths of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife in their home. The shootings on Saturday came two months after McLelland's assistant district attorney, Mark Hasse, was fatally shot in a parking lot a block from the courthouse on Jan. 31. Authorities appear to be stymied in their investigations of both killings. "We're still in shock," Kaufman County Judge Bruce Wood told reporters Monday. "I guess that's the best way to describe our feelings about this latest incident. I've searched all weekend to think of the right word to describe and I can't come up with a single word. 'Unbelievable, this really didn't happen,' but it did. This whole thing is shocking to all of us." Wood said security protection had been ordered for several county officials. "We're very much on alert," he said. "We obviously have some folks that are out to do harm to elected officials." Authorities have been investigating the possibility of a connection of both killings with the brutal Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a prison gang of about 3,000 inmates. Earlier this month, the Kaufman police chief said the FBI was looking for any connection between the attack on Hasse and the shooting death March 19 of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements in his home. Colorado authorities have noted that the suspect in that shooting, Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, was a member of a white supremacist prison gang called the 211 Crew when he served time in a Colorado prison. Ebel later died in a shootout with Texas law enforcement officers northwest of Dallas. McLelland himself, in an Associated Press interview shortly after the Colorado slaying, raised the possibility that Hasse was gunned down by a white supremacist gang. McLelland, elected district attorney in 2010, said his office had prosecuted several cases against racist gangs, who have a strong presence around Kaufman County, a mostly rural area dotted with subdivisions, with a population of about 104,000. Kaufman prosecutors were among scores in Texas who were strongly pursuing cases against the prison gangs. However, there has been no evidence so far of a link to the white supremacist gangs in either of the Kaufman shootings, except for that fact that they appear to be a professional "hit." Judge Wood has also said that Kaufman County investigators have found no link between the Clements shooting and the killing of Hasse. Harris County District Attorney Mike Anderson said on Sunday that he had accepted the Houston sheriff's offer of 24-hour security for him and his family after learning about the slayings, mostly over concerns for his family's safety. Anderson said he also would take precautions at his office, the largest one in Texas, which has more than 270 prosecutors. "I think district attorneys across Texas are still in a state of shock," Anderson said Sunday. Contributing: Associated Press |
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