A US judge has accepted of plea of not guilty by reason of insanity from the man accused of last summer’s Colorado cinema shootings.
The decision sets the stage for a lengthy mental evaluation of James Holmes, who is accused of killing 12 people and injuring 70 in a packed Denver-area screening of a Batman movie last July.
The evaluation could take months. Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Holmes’s lawyers have repeatedly said he is mentally ill, but they delayed the insanity plea while arguing that state laws were unconstitutional.
They said the laws could hobble the defence if Holmes’s case should ever reach the phase where the jury decides if he should be executed. The judge rejected that argument last week.
