Colorado theater shooter sentenced to life in prison, no parole

Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others in the July 20, 2012, ambush. He was convicted of first-degree murder and 140 counts of attempted first-degree murder as well as an explosives charge.

Colorado prisons officials will determine where Holmes will be incarcerated after an evaluation that includes his mental health. Holmes, who has been diagnosed with varying forms of schizophrenia, could wind up in the corrections department's mental hospital, the 250-bed San Carlos Correctional Facility in Pueblo. He could be transferred to an out-of-state prison.

Holmes moved from California to Colorado in 2011 and entered a prestigious postgraduate neuroscience program at the University of Colorado at Denver. He dropped out after a year; by that time, he was well into planning the attack and stockpiling ammunition. He rigged his apartment to explode on the night of the attack, hoping to divert first responders from the Aurora theater. The homemade devices didn't go off.

In July the jury rejected Holmes' insanity plea, finding he knew right from wrong. But the jurors couldn't unanimously agree on the death penalty, meaning he was automatically sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors subsequently said one juror refused to sentence Holmes to death, apparently swayed by defense arguments that he did not deserve execution because he suffers from mental illness.

To the end, Holmes' state-appointed attorneys blamed the massacre on his schizophrenia and psychotic delusions. They said that he has been obsessed with the idea of mass killing since childhood and that he pursued neuroscience in an effort to find out what was wrong with his brain.

Prosecutors pointed both to Holmes' elaborate planning for the attack and his refusal to divulge to anyone — family, friends, psychiatrists — that he was thinking about and planning the attack.

Holmes stockpiled guns and ammunition and mapped out the Aurora theater complex to determine which auditorium would allow for the most casualties. He even calculated police response times.

The Associated Press