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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion