Cinema gunman could face death penalty

The man accused of killing a dozen people in a Colorado movie theatre during a showing of the new Batman film made his first appearance in court, sitting silently in a red jailhouse jumpsuit and with his hair dyed bright red.

James Eagan Holmes, 24, who was detained immediately after the massacre early on Friday morning, appeared groggy and emotionless during the brief hearing, looking straight ahead and occasionally closing his eyes. He was shackled at the wrists and ankles.

The judge said murder charges would be filed on Monday, July 30.

Police say Holmes was dressed in body armour and toting three guns when he opened fire at a packed midnight screening of the Dark Knight Rises at a theatre complex in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Fifty-eight other people were hurt, many of them seriously.

Police say they are still searching for a motive for the crime.

Holmes was represented by a public defender during the brief hearing before Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester.

Arapahoe County district attorney Carol Chambers has the task of deciding whether to seek the death penalty for Holmes.

She has prosecuted two of the three inmates who are now on Colorado’s death row.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama travelled to the suburb of 325,000 to offer comfort to families of the victims. He told them their loved ones would be remembered long after the justice system was done with the killer.

The dead included war veterans, an aspiring sportscaster who had barely escaped a shooting in a Toronto mall earlier this summer, and a six-year-old girl.

The crime meets all the elements of Colorado capital case law, including premeditation, multiple victims, and the killing of a child, said former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman.

“If James Holmes isn’t executed, Colorado may as well throw away its death penalty law,” he said.

Holmes and his motives remained largely a mystery, with past associates saying he displayed no hints of a mental illness.

Meanwhile, two suspicious packages were received by the University of Colorado yesterday,

The first package arrived early in the morning and was slipped under the door at a campus building while it was mostly empty.

People were not allowed into the building until the threat was cleared. A spokeswoman said she did not know what the package was or who it came from.

The second package was addressed to a person in a separate building and came to the school’s central mail facility.

Police have said Holmes ordered ammunition online and received at least 50 packages in four months at his home and at school.