The suspected Batman massacre gunman was seeing a psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia before the attack that killed 12 in Colorado, court documents showed.
The motion named Lynne Fenton for the first time as defense attorneys sought to gain access to a package James Holmes mailed to her prior the July 20 mass shooting, which also wounded 58 people.
Reports surfaced this week that Holmes — who recently dropped out of the University of Colorado — had sent a notebook to a university psychiatrist that included details and drawings of his plans to kill people.
There were conflicting reports about whether the package reached the school in time to potentially prevent the massacre, but officials remained tight-lipped because of a strict gag order imposed by the judge overseeing the case.
However, defense attorneys said that someone had leaked information about the package to the media, thus undercutting Holmes’s right to a fair trial.
“The government’s disclosure of this confidential and privileged information has placed Mr Holmes’ constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial by an impartial jury at serious jeopardy,” the attorneys wrote.
In a preview of likely battles to come, the defense lawyers also said that the contents of the package should not be used as evidence because communications between Holmes and Fenton were “protected.”
The filing said Holmes was Fenton’s “psychiatric patient.”
Fenton teaches at the University of Colorado’s medical school and heads student mental health services there, in addition to conducting research in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.
However, the document did not indicate how long Holmes had been seeing Fenton or whether she was treating him for mental illness.
Prosecutors rebuffed the defense motion, arguing that news stories about the package contained significant “factual errors” and that there was no evidence the government was responsible for the leaks.
The reporting mistakes may indicate that reporters are “getting information from hoaxers, fraudsters or maybe from nobody at all by creating fake ‘law enforcement sources’ out of whole cloth,” prosecutors wrote.
They also indicated that a FoxNews.com report that the package contained a notebook “full of details” about the suspected gunman’s plans for a massacre was incorrect.
Holmes, who was studying neuroscience in a doctoral program at the University of Colorado -Denver, is expected to be formally charged at his next court hearing tomorrow.
Judge William Sylvester ordered a hearing on the defense motions to also be held then.
Separately, attorneys for 21 US news organizations filed a motion asking Sylvester to reverse his order to seal court records in the case.
The judge has ordered prosecutors and the defense to file their motions under seal and ordered the University of Colorado to withhold records that concern Holmes.
Holmes gained access to the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado outside Denver via a fire exit shortly after the screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises began and threw two canisters of noxious gas into the auditorium, witnesses said.
After firing one round directly into the air with a pump-action shotgun, he began shooting people at random with a military-style assault rifle capable of firing 50 to 60 rounds a minute.
Authorities say Holmes — who had dyed his hair a reddish orange — claimed he was the Joker, Batman’s sworn enemy in the comic book series that inspired director Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy, which features British-born actor Christian Bale as “the caped crusader.”
Holmes, 24, is being held in solitary confinement at the Arapahoe County detention center and could face the death penalty if convicted, although Colorado has only executed one person since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS