Speaker 1: In May, a former British soldier named James Hadfield tried
Speaker 1: to kill the King of England. Hadfield fired a horse
Speaker 1: pistol on King George the Third as he entered the
Speaker 1: Theater Royal in London. He missed, but Hadfield didn't care.
Speaker 1: The delusional assassin was convinced that his own execution for
Speaker 1: the crime would bring about the second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: It didn't, but it did bring about a revolution in
Speaker 1: the criminal law. An enterprising lawyer saved Hadfield from the
Speaker 1: hangman's noose, and the man who had tried to shoot
Speaker 1: the king was found not guilty of treason by way
Speaker 1: of insanity. That case is the granddaddy of all modern
Speaker 1: day insanity defenses, including a present day massacre that led
Speaker 1: to the longest prison sentence in US history. Three fifteen
Speaker 1: and three fourteen. First shooting at Centre Theaters, fourteen Et
Speaker 1: Alameda Avenue. Somebody's suit in the auditorium over at the
Speaker 1: fun to the theater. Somebody is still sitting inside the
Speaker 1: number nine. Current employe. Yeah, all of our people, same
Speaker 1: theater nine where Batman was playing. We got another curt
Speaker 1: out place in the leg of female. I got people
Speaker 1: run it out of thee they're shot and learned night.
Speaker 1: I got coming down. When you're not coming down, you're
Speaker 1: up coming to start thinking somebody victims be a car.
Speaker 1: I got a whole bunch of people got out here.
Speaker 1: No rescue. Yeah, up the car and you're out of here.
Speaker 1: It was one of the worst mash shootings in American history.
Speaker 1: Twelve people killed and fifty eight injured. Seventy victims in all,
Speaker 1: so many the police turned the back seats of their
Speaker 1: cruisers into makeshift ambulances. But this mash shooting, perpetrated in
Speaker 1: a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was different. James Holmes,
Speaker 1: the Killer survived. I'm Sean Braswell and this is the thread.
Speaker 1: Each season we unraveled the stories behind some of the
Speaker 1: most important lives and events in history to discover essentially
Speaker 1: how one thing leads to another. This season, we revisit
Speaker 1: some of the most high profile criminal cases in history
Speaker 1: through the lens of the controversial legal defense that binds
Speaker 1: them together not guilty by way of insanity. We will
Speaker 1: see how this remarkable thread of insanity cases grows out
Speaker 1: of the trial of James Hadfield a hundred and continues
Speaker 1: to impact the law today. We begin, though, with that
Speaker 1: mass murder in Aurora, Colorado. Some of the details you're
Speaker 1: about to hear are horrific, but they were key to
Speaker 1: helping the jury in the case determine if the defendant
Speaker 1: was out of his mind at the time of the shooting.
Speaker 1: Five minutes after midnight on July twelve, twenty four year
Speaker 1: old James Egan Holmes strolled through the front doors of
Speaker 1: the Century sixteen Movie Theater in Aurora, Colorado. He stopped
Speaker 1: to hold the door open for two fellow theater goers
Speaker 1: who entered after him. Holmes calmly walked over to a
Speaker 1: kiosk and picked up his ticket for the late night
Speaker 1: showing of the new Batman movie, A Dark Night Rises.
Speaker 1: He wore dark, baggy cargo pants and a slightly crooked
Speaker 1: baseball cap that covered a mop of dyed orange hair.
Speaker 1: His hair was perhaps out of the ordinary, but there
Speaker 1: was nothing on the surface to distinguish homes from the
Speaker 1: dozens of casually dressed young men there to see the
Speaker 1: latest blockbuster about their favorite comic book. He row. Holmes
Speaker 1: entered theater nine and took a seat in the front
Speaker 1: row of the packed auditorium As the film started, are
Speaker 1: you I'll be damned? I was his friend, and it
Speaker 1: will be a very long time for someone inspires us.
Speaker 1: Minutes later, Holmes pretended to take a phone call. He
Speaker 1: left through the theater's emergency exit, careful to prop open
Speaker 1: the door behind him. When he returned from his part
Speaker 1: car to the theater, it was thirty eight minutes past midnight.
Speaker 1: This time, he wore dark body armor and a gas
Speaker 1: mask and carried a shotgun, a high capacity assault rifle,
Speaker 1: and a handgun. This is Dr William Reid, a court
Speaker 1: appointed psychiatric expert in the Holmes case. He walked into
Speaker 1: the theater from the screenside exit through the tear gas
Speaker 1: grenade across the theater, and he began shooting, primarily first
Speaker 1: with the shotgun. There's a moment where my daughter tripped
Speaker 1: in and I just pulled her up, and I was
Speaker 1: just dragging her, and I was just thinking, we just
Speaker 1: gotta get out, just even I just got to get
Speaker 1: out the doors. And even if this ball did just
Speaker 1: just get my kids out of here, it was it
Speaker 1: was just so worrible. Holmes walked slowly up and down
Speaker 1: theater aisles. He fired at random people with his shotgun
Speaker 1: until it was empty. Then he dropped it and began
Speaker 1: to fire with the assault rifle. Suddenly, his rifle jammed.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get it to unjammed and left the theater.
Speaker 1: He decided, in his words, the mission was over. He
Speaker 1: calmly walked out of the theater. He actually walked through
Speaker 1: some victim's blood as he walked toward his car. Police
Speaker 1: found Holmes waiting for them in a white Hunda sedan
Speaker 1: parked just behind the theater. They took him to Aurora
Speaker 1: Police headquarters and placed him in a bare interview room
Speaker 1: to await interrogation. Holmes is calm detached. An officer puts
Speaker 1: little paper bags over his hands and tapes them to
Speaker 1: his wrists a way of preserving gunpowder residue. Holmes plays
Speaker 1: with the paper bags as if they were hand puppets.
Speaker 1: Because homes surrendered, lawyers psychiatrists in the American public were
Speaker 1: given a rare chance to grapple with them. Asked murderer
Speaker 1: directly to glimpse inside the mind of someone who is
Speaker 1: both mentally ill and highly intelligent, to try to understand
Speaker 1: how an honor student named Jimmy from a loving family
Speaker 1: could transform into a crazed killer. James Holmes's crime was
Speaker 1: horrific and there was no doubt that he had done it.
Speaker 1: The question, rather was why Colorado prosecutor sought the death penalty.
Speaker 1: Holmes as lawyers fell back on a controversial criminal defense
Speaker 1: that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, and
Speaker 1: they painted a picture of James Holmes that was very
Speaker 1: different from the photos of the young man with orange
Speaker 1: hair that were all over the nightly news. To understand
Speaker 1: why his lawyers chose the insanity defense, we need to
Speaker 1: go back to his childhood, all right. Our next speaker
Speaker 1: is James Holme. Six years before the Aurora shooting, then
Speaker 1: eighteen year old Holmes gave a presentation to fellow summer
Speaker 1: interns at the prestigious Salt Constitute in Wlahoia, California. He
Speaker 1: just graduated from Westview High School and will be attending
Speaker 1: the University of California Riverside. His goals are to become
Speaker 1: a researcher and to make scientific discoveries. It's a good
Speaker 1: start in personal life. He enjoys playing soccer and strategy games,
Speaker 1: and his dream is to own a Slurpy machine. These
Speaker 1: kids have been fun to work with this summer. Holmes
Speaker 1: approaches the microphone. He's a skinny, geeky looking kid with
Speaker 1: big ears and a mop of hair brushed over his forehead.
Speaker 1: He wears an oversized button down shirt untucked. He's bright eyed,
Speaker 1: and like most of us, asked to give a presentation
Speaker 1: before a packed room of our peers, he is nervous
Speaker 1: and a bit awkward. Well. The lab by working is
Speaker 1: a computational neural biology lab, or CNL for short. That's right,
Speaker 1: James Holmes was not only a smart kid. He was
Speaker 1: an aspiring neuroscientist. My mentor, John Jacobson, who works in CNL,
Speaker 1: is a philosophical type of guy. He's interested in how
Speaker 1: we perceive reality. He also studies subjective experience, which is
Speaker 1: what takes place inside the mind as opposed to the
Speaker 1: external world. I've carried on his word and dealing with
Speaker 1: subjective experience. There was a reason James Holmes was interested
Speaker 1: in this area of research and why he wanted to
Speaker 1: be a neuroscientist. He knew something was wrong in his
Speaker 1: own head. He referred to it as his quote broken mind.
Speaker 1: There was nothing particularly unusual about him in his early years.
Speaker 1: Dr William read again a court appointed psychiatrist in the
Speaker 1: Holmes case and author of A Dark Knight in Aurora
Speaker 1: Inside James Holmes and the Colorado mass shootings. He went
Speaker 1: to school like everyone else and was particularly smart, I
Speaker 1: thought very well of by his teachers. The young boy
Speaker 1: from San Diego, California, known to everyone as Jimmy, had
Speaker 1: a very happy childhood. He had loving and attentive parents.
Speaker 1: His mom, a nurse, and his dad, as statistician, had
Speaker 1: met at Berkeley. Still, something dark lurked under the surface.
Speaker 1: As he entered adolescence. He noticed that something felt wrong
Speaker 1: about the way he got along with others and some
Speaker 1: of the thoughts in his head. Holmes started to keep
Speaker 1: to himself more. Around sixth grade, he heard noises hammering
Speaker 1: on his walls at night. He started to think about
Speaker 1: killing people, and over the next few years those thoughts
Speaker 1: and fantasies became more and more specific. He would see
Speaker 1: particular people dying, or see things that he described as
Speaker 1: nuclear winter or atomic bombs. He sometimes would even see
Speaker 1: saws cutting off people's heads. By high school, Holmes began
Speaker 1: to think he might be crazy, but he wanted to
Speaker 1: understand why to try to fix his broken mind. He
Speaker 1: believed there was something wrong with him, but still in
Speaker 1: high school he did very well. He easily got into
Speaker 1: college on a scholarship. Holmes continue to excel in college.
Speaker 1: At the University of California at Riverside, he was a
Speaker 1: dean's fellow. He graduated with honors in a nearly perfect
Speaker 1: four point o g p A. He was accepted into
Speaker 1: the neuroscience graduate program at the University of Colorado, and
Speaker 1: in twleven, just a year before the shooting, he packed
Speaker 1: his white hun day then headed eastward. It's the Rocky Mountains.
Speaker 1: He did very well for the first six months or
Speaker 1: so of grad school. The professors there and elsewhere will
Speaker 1: tell you that being a little eccentric isn't a bad
Speaker 1: thing for graduate students, particularly in sciences. They didn't mind
Speaker 1: the fact that he was a little odd because most
Speaker 1: of the other grad students were a little odd too,
Speaker 1: and Holmes did things that perfectly normal grad students do.
Speaker 1: On Valentine's Day, a mere five months before the shooting,
Speaker 1: he made his girlfriend a candle at chicken dinner at
Speaker 1: his apartment. They watched Netflix and eight ice cream. But
Speaker 1: underneath holmes Is broken brain was getting worse he was
Speaker 1: behind on his studies left the laboratory early. He started
Speaker 1: to see things at night, shadows that weren't there. In
Speaker 1: addition to his schooling, which he continued and continued to pass,
Speaker 1: James thought more and more about ways to kill people
Speaker 1: and began to plan specific ways to kill them. He
Speaker 1: called this his mission, and the mission was to kill
Speaker 1: as many people as possible so that he could collect
Speaker 1: their points. Homes called those points human capital. His delusion
Speaker 1: is a very strange one. It's hard to even to
Speaker 1: know how to describe it exactly. Richard Bonnie is a
Speaker 1: professor of law and of medicine at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1: He became increasingly preoccupied with the idea that his worth
Speaker 1: as a human being could somehow be increased if he
Speaker 1: would kill other people, and he thought killing other people
Speaker 1: might lessen his depression and suicidal thoughts. Again, William read,
Speaker 1: he told me that it was about a fifty fifty chance,
Speaker 1: so he was willing to kill others on the chance
Speaker 1: of feeling a bit better himself. But so far it
Speaker 1: was just feelings and talk. Home sought help and is
Speaker 1: referred to a psychiatrist named Lynn Fenton at the student
Speaker 1: mental health clinic. In March, he told Dr Fitton about
Speaker 1: his thoughts of killing, but withheld his views on human
Speaker 1: capital and denied he had any specific targets or plans
Speaker 1: to kill. Based on what she heard and the fact
Speaker 1: that Holmes had no history of violence, Vinton prescribed him
Speaker 1: medication for anxiety and depression and scheduled a future appointment.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone that I talked with or that I read about,
Speaker 1: wonders why in the world nobody put James Holmes in
Speaker 1: the hospital. Uh, the reason is quite clear. Our laws
Speaker 1: are civil rights laws, and mental health laws in every
Speaker 1: state make it very difficult to take away a person's
Speaker 1: right to walk around to hospitalize them against their will. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Holmes's outward life started to match the chaos of his
Speaker 1: inward life. His girlfriend left him, he failed his second
Speaker 1: year exams, and he dropped out of grad school. Over
Speaker 1: the next few weeks, James Holmes hurtled toward disaster and
Speaker 1: the moment he would change thousands of lives. By June,
Speaker 1: his mission to kill as many people as possible consumed
Speaker 1: most of his time. He picked a target for his assault,
Speaker 1: a location designed to maximize his kills. He began to
Speaker 1: purchase weapons, ammunition and armor, and then one warm evening
Speaker 1: in July, it was time to execute his mission. And
Speaker 1: finally he brought together all of his body armor and
Speaker 1: ballistic clothing, his weapons, which included an m M P
Speaker 1: fifteen rifle which is much like an a R fifteen
Speaker 1: semi automatic rifle, a shotgun to block handguns, and a
Speaker 1: great deal of ammunition. And then he got in his
Speaker 1: car and drove without incident, over to the theater. Up
Speaker 1: next the trial of James Holmes. The Aurora gunman was
Speaker 1: clearly disturbed, but would it be enough for him to
Speaker 1: be deemed legally insane. When it's time to make a
Speaker 1: hire for your small business, naturally you want to find
Speaker 1: the best person for the job. Odds are that person
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Speaker 1: Terms and conditions apply. A disturbing story that has been
Speaker 1: sealed away in court for three years came pouring out today.
Speaker 1: This is the first day of the trial of James Holmes. Holmes.
Speaker 1: This trial in returned Aurora to the National Spotlight. Prosecution
Speaker 1: filed one hundred and sixty six criminal charges against Holmes,
Speaker 1: including twenty four counts of murder and one d and
Speaker 1: forty counts of attempted murder. The district attorney made it
Speaker 1: clear he would seek the death penalty for Holmes as
Speaker 1: heinous deeds. Four hundred people filed into a box like
Speaker 1: theater to be entertained, and one person came there to
Speaker 1: slaughter them. His name is James Egan Holmes, he tried
Speaker 1: to murder a theater full of people to make himself
Speaker 1: feel better. Homes sat at the defense table and a
Speaker 1: dress shirt and slacks, his hair trimmed short, and no
Speaker 1: longer died Orange. His lawyers from the Colorado State Public
Speaker 1: Defender's Office did not challenge that their client had committed
Speaker 1: the atrocity. What the case really came down to, they said,
Speaker 1: was what was going on in his mind. There will
Speaker 1: be no doubt in your minds by the end of
Speaker 1: this trial that Mr Holmes is severely mentally ill. None.
Speaker 1: Why was holmes a state of mind so important the
Speaker 1: insanity defense. Most crimes aren't actually crimes under the law
Speaker 1: unless the defendant intends to do something criminal. Criminal intent
Speaker 1: is required to commit a crime. Yet there's no criminal intent,
Speaker 1: there's no crime. Andrea Alden is author of Disorder in
Speaker 1: the Court, Morality Myth, and the Insanity Defense. For as
Speaker 1: long as we've had civilizations with law, systems of law
Speaker 1: and place, there has been some sort of understanding that
Speaker 1: certain people don't understand the law due to some sort
Speaker 1: of meant defect. A recognition of this fact, of the
Speaker 1: importance of understanding the law when it comes to guilt
Speaker 1: is widespread. In the days of the Roman Empire, defendants
Speaker 1: were sometimes found not guilty because they were noncompassmentous, meaning
Speaker 1: without mastery of mind. William Read again. Some version of
Speaker 1: an insanity defense has been around for centuries, even for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. The Jewish Torah and Talmud speak of
Speaker 1: not holding people responsible for things that they do when
Speaker 1: they're out of their head. The process, if you look
Speaker 1: at it carefully, is perfectly reasonable. We don't convict four
Speaker 1: year olds of murder if they find a gun and
Speaker 1: accidentally shoot their playmate. Richard Bonnie again a legal scholar
Speaker 1: who has written extensively about the insanity defense. So I
Speaker 1: think that basic intuition is that it's not fair right
Speaker 1: to blame someone when their capacity to choose to do
Speaker 1: the right thing has been fundamentally undermined, you know, by
Speaker 1: a psychotic process over which they have, you know, no control.
Speaker 1: In other words, the subjective reality of defendants like James
Speaker 1: Holmes matters. The psychiatric idea here is that as the
Speaker 1: person becomes increasingly focused and driven by something that's not
Speaker 1: true but is what they believe to be true, and
Speaker 1: they become you know, detached, from the reality of what
Speaker 1: they are doing. They are also becoming detached from the
Speaker 1: moral reality you know, of what they are doing. But
Speaker 1: how do we tell when someone like James Holmes is
Speaker 1: sufficiently detached from reality to lack criminal intent? How do
Speaker 1: we know if he is indeed insane? Keep in mind
Speaker 1: the insanity is a legal term, not a medical term.
Speaker 1: He would never be diagnosed by a psychiatrist as being insane.
Speaker 1: In other words, the legal concept of insanity is different
Speaker 1: from the medical or psychological concept of mental illness. William
Speaker 1: read again. In fact, most people who are mentally ill
Speaker 1: are quite responsible for their acts and quite competent to
Speaker 1: do various things like go to work and drive a car,
Speaker 1: and sign a contract, or or raise their kids. The
Speaker 1: point for the insanity defense is is there, as a
Speaker 1: result of significant mental illness, an absence of the ability
Speaker 1: two understand what one is doing, understand that it's wrong,
Speaker 1: and adhere to the to the right if you will.
Speaker 1: Legal insanity in most jurisdictions boils down to this question,
Speaker 1: did the accused understand the difference between right and wrong
Speaker 1: at the time they committed the crime. It's a simple question,
Speaker 1: the one that has proven almost impossible at times for lawyers, judges, juries,
Speaker 1: and even psychiatrists answer. The case of James Holmes was
Speaker 1: no different. Could listening make you a better parent, a
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Speaker 1: for a change. The mystery of any insanity defense trial
Speaker 1: is what was happening in the defendant's mind at the
Speaker 1: time that he committed the crime for for for which
Speaker 1: he's being tried. This is Lincoln Kaplan, a senior research
Speaker 1: scholar at Yale Law School and an expert on the
Speaker 1: insanity defense. And you can't get inside someone's head uh
Speaker 1: in in the way you could if if we were
Speaker 1: machines and we had tape recorders for brains. The trial
Speaker 1: of James Holmes provides a recent and powerful example of
Speaker 1: the challenges of climbing inside a defendant's brain and some
Speaker 1: of the evidence that can be used to decide whether
Speaker 1: they knew the difference between right and wrong. The prosecution
Speaker 1: set out to show that Holmes knew exactly what he
Speaker 1: was doing. First, his lengthy preparations for the slaughter did
Speaker 1: not seem to be the actions of a man who
Speaker 1: was out of his mind. Homes stockpiled firearms, and thousands
Speaker 1: of rounds of ammunition at his apartment. For weeks, he
Speaker 1: practiced shooting at firing ranges he read up about explosives.
Speaker 1: Holmes also took disturbing selfies of himself. In one taken
Speaker 1: just days before the shooting, Holmes with his hair dyed
Speaker 1: bright orange red, where his black contact lenses and grins
Speaker 1: diabolically into the camera like a comic book villain. The
Speaker 1: prosecution also pointed out another key piece of evidence. The
Speaker 1: public got a first look today at a key piece
Speaker 1: of evidence and James holmes murder trial, a notebook The
Speaker 1: defense hopefuill help prove he was legally insane when he
Speaker 1: opened fire in a Colorado movie theater. Holmes mailed the
Speaker 1: spiral bound notebook to his psychiatrist, Dr. Finnon just hours
Speaker 1: before the shooting. It contained about thirty pages of often
Speaker 1: disjointed writings and illustrations. William read again. Some of the
Speaker 1: things he wrote look crazy. Some of the things he
Speaker 1: wrote looked like plans for the shooting. Some of the
Speaker 1: things he wrote looked like philosophy and thoughts about life,
Speaker 1: including his own life. Homes spelled out his theories of
Speaker 1: human capital using logic, math, and stick figure drawings. He
Speaker 1: called it insights into the mind of madness. He tried
Speaker 1: to diagnose his own mental illness and admitted he was
Speaker 1: powerless to fix it. He wrote, so anyways, that is
Speaker 1: my mind. It is broken. Neuroscience seemed like the way
Speaker 1: to go, but it didn't pan out. In order to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate the broken mind, my soul must be eviscerated. One
Speaker 1: of the things that was in the notebook that was
Speaker 1: very interesting was evidence that he considered a number of
Speaker 1: different ways to kill a lot of people a number
Speaker 1: of different venues in including but not limited to movie theaters.
Speaker 1: Evidence that he cased the cinema in Aurora carefully to
Speaker 1: find out which of the auditoriums would be the best
Speaker 1: one in which to commit the killings. The prosecution emphasized
Speaker 1: how Holmes used the notebook to plan his attack. Defense lawyers,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, argued it was proof of just
Speaker 1: how extensive holmes As delusions were. So looking at the
Speaker 1: notebook gives us a little bit of a window into
Speaker 1: how he was thinking or believing at a certain time,
Speaker 1: but it really doesn't describe Holmes in any accurate or
Speaker 1: consistent way. One cannot look in my opinion at that
Speaker 1: notebook and say, oh, here's a person with a severe
Speaker 1: mental illness such as schizophrenia. The evidence was inconclusive on
Speaker 1: the subject of Holmes as state of mind, and like
Speaker 1: so many insanity defense cases, it came down to the
Speaker 1: insights of expert psychiatric witnesses. Andrea Alden, in order for
Speaker 1: you to use your mental illness as a mitigating factor
Speaker 1: in a criminal defense, you're obviously having to talk about
Speaker 1: your mental illness in a legal setting, and then you're
Speaker 1: also going to need medical experts or psychiatrists or psychologists
Speaker 1: to come in and testify on your behalf. There were
Speaker 1: four such experts in the Holmes case. Each agreed that
Speaker 1: Holmes was delusional, and then his behavior was traceable to
Speaker 1: his mental illness. Richard Bonnie, So in that particular case
Speaker 1: is it's often the case you you have fun, you know,
Speaker 1: basic agreement about the seriousness of the mental illness and
Speaker 1: about the psychotic process that's going on. But what there
Speaker 1: may be some disagreement about is what the degree of
Speaker 1: detachment you know, from reality. Was the first three experts,
Speaker 1: one for the prosecution, one for the defense, and one
Speaker 1: court appointed deadlocked about homes of psychosis. So the judge
Speaker 1: appointed a fourth highly regarded expert to help. Dr William Reid,
Speaker 1: who you've been hearing from this episode. I went to
Speaker 1: Colorado and interviewed Holmes at the Colorado Mental Health Institute
Speaker 1: at Pueblo six times, and a couple of weeks later
Speaker 1: interviewed him three times at the jail in Aurora. So
Speaker 1: I spent almost twenty four hours with Holmes over time,
Speaker 1: all videoed so that there's no question of what I said,
Speaker 1: what he said, what he looked like. The video of
Speaker 1: those interviews was played for the jury on a television
Speaker 1: screen in the Arapahoe County courtroom for the jury. The
Speaker 1: video is a brief look inside the mind of the
Speaker 1: alleged killer, taken during a mental evaluation to help determine
Speaker 1: whether Holmes was legally insane when he opened fire in
Speaker 1: a Colorado movie theater. Holmes appears calm in the video.
Speaker 1: He speaks in a monotone voice, but he seems to
Speaker 1: understand the questions being asked by Dr. Read How did
Speaker 1: it feel to me, I'm really doing it gileration or
Speaker 1: known caution? Pretty aware of what was around. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see people trying to leave and sitting down
Speaker 1: on the sea, William Read again. My diagnostic impression was
Speaker 1: that he had something with in the profession call excuse
Speaker 1: a type of personality that's a serious mental illness, but
Speaker 1: not one in which people are routinely psychotic, that is,
Speaker 1: lose lose contact with reality. And I did not believe
Speaker 1: that he had lost contact with reality. At the time
Speaker 1: of the shootings. Read believed Holmes of mentally ill, but
Speaker 1: he did not think his illness prevented him from having
Speaker 1: criminal intent, from knowing the difference between right and wrong.
Speaker 1: Holmes planned everything that he did. He planned it very carefully.
Speaker 1: He practiced it. He planned a diversion, He planned ways
Speaker 1: to get away, although he didn't try to get away.
Speaker 1: He told me and he told other people that he
Speaker 1: was aware that his victims would not have wanted to die,
Speaker 1: would not have wanted to be shot. Holmes knew the
Speaker 1: killings were legal and wrong. He knew law enforcement would
Speaker 1: try to stop him if they discovered his plans. Holmes
Speaker 1: carried out his mission deliberately and with knowledge of the consequences.
Speaker 1: We believed that, in spite of his serious mental illness,
Speaker 1: that illness did not remove his legal sanity for purposes
Speaker 1: of being tried for a crime. The Colorado jury agreed.
Speaker 1: After deliberating for just twelve hours, they found Homes guilty
Speaker 1: of one hundred and sixty counts of murder and attempted murder.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to more than three thousand years in prison,
Speaker 1: the longest sentence in American history. A single holdout juror
Speaker 1: was all that kept Homes from getting the death penalty.
Speaker 1: The judge's final words as he closed the trial were, Sheriff,
Speaker 1: get the in and out of my courtroom. Please. Cheers
Speaker 1: erupted as Holmes was led off to jail. The sentencing
Speaker 1: of James Holmes brought some closure to the victims of
Speaker 1: the Aurora shooting in their families, and he deserved to
Speaker 1: be held accountable for his crimes. Still, says William Reid,
Speaker 1: he would not have committed them if he did not
Speaker 1: suffer from a broken mind, if he were not mentally ill.
Speaker 1: How in the world can someone who kills twelve people
Speaker 1: and injures another fifty eight and leaves a terrible tragedy
Speaker 1: in a theater at midnight, How in the world can
Speaker 1: that person be viewed as sane in any reasonable sense?
Speaker 1: Part of that determination comes down to appearances and the
Speaker 1: impression made upon a jury. Holmes had bright orange hair
Speaker 1: and wild eyes, and his initial public appearances he looked
Speaker 1: like a madman. But he looked like a very different
Speaker 1: person three years later when he sat in the courtroom
Speaker 1: in a nice shirt and glasses. Andrea Alden one of
Speaker 1: the problems with understanding mental illness, particularly for lay people,
Speaker 1: for jurors, for judges um is that if you don't
Speaker 1: conform to the physical outward appearance of what we think
Speaker 1: quote unquote crazy should look like, then we cannot accept
Speaker 1: that you might be so mentally ill that you committed
Speaker 1: this crime as a result of your mental illness and
Speaker 1: not just because you were a bad person. The prosecution argued,
Speaker 1: Homes knew the difference between right and law, which is
Speaker 1: the standard for insanity under Colorado law. But it's just
Speaker 1: knowing that your actions are against the rules enough to
Speaker 1: be deemed sane. Did that make homes more bad than
Speaker 1: he was? Mad? Richard Bonny, So he had a grip,
Speaker 1: you know, at some level, on the reality, on the
Speaker 1: moral reality and the legal reality of the criminal reality
Speaker 1: of his conduct. What he might not have been sufficiently
Speaker 1: in touch with reality is to know in a deeper sense,
Speaker 1: to appreciate the moral enormity of what he was doing.
Speaker 1: And somehow the more delusional he got, the more you
Speaker 1: know the moral interests and the human interest and the
Speaker 1: human connection of the people who would be his victims,
Speaker 1: you know, the less that meant to him. The James
Speaker 1: Holmes case showed us how hard it is even for
Speaker 1: a severely mentally ill defendant to win with an insanity
Speaker 1: defense today. But to better understand why that is the
Speaker 1: case and how the insanity defense has evolved through time,
Speaker 1: we need to travel back through time to the first
Speaker 1: major case to address legal insanity, back all the way
Speaker 1: to another James James Hadfield, that British soldier who tried
Speaker 1: to kill the king back in eighteen hundred. Our journey
Speaker 1: back to James Hadfield will take us through some of
Speaker 1: the most compelling and horrifying criminal cases in history, cases
Speaker 1: that push the bounds of public opinion, scientific understanding, and
Speaker 1: the law. Up next episode two of this season's thread
Speaker 1: on the insanity defense will consider a case from the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties. One of the reasons that defendants like
Speaker 1: Jane Holmes have a tough time proving legal insanity today
Speaker 1: was the public outcry that followed earlier high profile cases,
Speaker 1: cases in which defendants who had committed shocking crimes were
Speaker 1: found not guilty by reason of insanity. One of those
Speaker 1: defendants was the rain of Bobbitt. She went to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: she sees a knife, she grabs it. Um, she goes
Speaker 1: back into the bedroom, and you know the rest of
Speaker 1: sort of history. She cuts off his penis while he
Speaker 1: is asleep. What Lorraina Bobbitt did to her sleeping husband,
Speaker 1: John Wayne Bobbitt captivated the country, and it revealed a
Speaker 1: public divided over issues like domestic violence and sexual assault,
Speaker 1: one more willing to laugh at an inexplicable tragedy than
Speaker 1: to face up to it, but to see it on
Speaker 1: the news. What happened to him? Very funny really, And
Speaker 1: when it came to Lorraina Bobbitt's insanity defense at trial,
Speaker 1: it revealed something else that what looks like justice may
Speaker 1: have little relation ship to the law. Um Threat is
Speaker 1: produced by Robert Coolo, Sophia Perpetua, and me Sean braswell.
Speaker 1: Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode features Out and
Speaker 1: Vargas with a song called Back to insanity. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the thread, visit ausi dot com. Slash the
Speaker 1: thread all one word, and make sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the thread on Apple podcasts, follow us on I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out
Speaker 1: at ausi dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If
Speaker 1: you love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no further
Speaker 1: than the flashback section of ausi dot com. That's o
Speaker 1: z y dot com. You love me, m let me
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