Plea offer of man accused of Batman killings is rejected

Prosecutors have rejected the plea offer of the man accused of gunning down 12 people in a Colorado movie theatre last July, saying his defence team’s offer of a guilty plea in exchange for avoiding the death penalty was not legitimate.

“There is not — and has never been — an actual or unqualified ‘offer’ to plead guilty,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. “The prosecution indicated that it could not consider such an offer without specific additional information, which the defence refused to provide.”

James Holmes, 25, faces multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder stemming from the July 20 massacre at a showing of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, that also wounded 58 people.

Arapahoe County district attorney George Brauchler has said that he would inform the court on Monday whether his office would seek the death penalty against the former University of Colorado neuroscience graduate student accused of one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history.

The possibility that Holmes could plead guilty in the case made international headlines, and prosecutors suggested in their court filing that his lawyers were seeking publicity.