Judge in Colorado cinema rampage case allows second sanity exam at trial

By Keith Coffman DENVER (Reuters) - A judge overseeing the Colorado theater massacre case rejected a defense motion on Friday to have a second sanity examination administered to accused gunman James Holmes barred from his upcoming murder trial, court records show. Holmes, 26, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire inside a Denver-area theater during a midnight screening of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” in July of 2012, killing 12 moviegoers and wounding dozens more. Prosecutors have charged Holmes with multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder, and say they will seek the death penalty for the onetime neuroscience graduate student if he is convicted. Holmes underwent a mandatory psychiatric examination last year after invoking the insanity defense, but Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour ordered a second round of testing, agreeing with prosecutors who argued the first one was flawed. Public defenders sought to have the second evaluation excluded or to limit testimony about it, arguing that it should have not been conducted in the first place, and that it overlaps the findings of the first examiner. Results of the two mental examinations have not been made public, but in his ruling Samour noted that it was “patently obvious” that the two evaluations reached differing conclusions about Holmes’ sanity. “The disparate reactions by the defendant to the two examinations speak volumes about the differences between the two reports,” Samour wrote. The judge denied the bulk of the motion, but did order that the second evaluator could not testify at trial about the first evaluation’s deficiencies. Samour said 9,000 jury summonses will be sent to county residents next month, and lawyers for both sides will start paring down the list in January. The judge said he wants opening statements to begin on June 3, but said that date could be moved up if jury selection concludes sooner than he anticipates. (Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Eric Walsh)