The jury in the James Holmes trial is nothing if not efficient.
At each stage of the process — in finding him guilty of murder and now in ruling on whether “mitigating” factors of his life outweighed the horror of his crimes — the jury has not wasted time.
On Monday, it deliberated less than three hours before pushing the trial into the final phase.
No, the mitigating factors don’t outweigh the horror of the crimes, the jurors unanimously concluded. And how could they have found otherwise, given the magnitude of the slaughter?
There has been a sense of inevitability so far in the jury’s decisions, but will that extend to whether Holmes should die? No, that decision is far too grave — and for the individual jurors, far too personal — for anyone to be confident about the outcome.
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