Holmes faces 24 charges of murder over cinema deaths

Colorado prosecutors formally charged a former neuroscience graduate student with 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder in the shooting rampage at the midnight showing of the new Batman movie.

James Holmes appeared just as dazed as he did in his first court appearance last week, but at one point exchanged a few words with one of his attorneys in the packed courtroom.

The breakdown of the charges was not immediately clear.

The attack at The Dark Knight Rises showing at a cinema in Aurora left 12 people dead and 58 injured.

One of the victims critically wounded in the Cineplex 16 shootings, Ashley Moser, suffered a miscarriage over the weekend. Moser’s 6-year-old daughter Veronica was the youngest person killed in the attack.

After Holmes’s arrest, police said they found that his apartment was booby trapped. Among the charges was one count of possession of explosives.

Legal analysts expect the case to be dominated by arguments over the defendant’s sanity.

Unlike Holmes’s first court appearance last week, yesterday’s hearing was not televised. At the request of the defence, district chief judge William Sylvester barred video and still cameras from the hearing, saying expanded coverage could interfere with Holmes’s right to a fair trial.

Investigators said Holmes began stockpiling gear for his assault four months ago and bought his weapons in May and June.

Analysts said that means it’s likely there’s only one main point of legal dispute between prosecutors and the defence.

“I don’t think it’s too hard to predict the path of this proceeding,” said Craig Silverman, a former chief deputy district attorney in Denver.

“This is not a whodunit... The only possible defence is insanity.”