Colorado cinema gunman handed multiple life sentences

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour on Wednesday told the courtroom that he had given the 27-year-old Holmes 12 life sentences without parole plus 3,318 years in prison, the maximum allowed by law.

Samour did not have the option of ordering the death penalty after a jury failed to agree unanimously that the convict should be executed. Prosecutors have said that 11 of the 12 jurors had voted to impose the death penalty, but one had held out for life imprisonment.

"It is the court's intention that the defendant never set foot in free society again ... If there was ever a case that warranted the maximum sentences, this is the case," Samour told the court as he read out the sentence. "The defendant does not deserve any sympathy."

The judge said it was clear that Holmes had been determined to kill "as many innocents as possible" after deciding to "quit" in life.

The former neuroscience graduate student, who was found guilty last month of killing 12 people and wounding 70 others when he opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol in a cinema in the Denver suburb of Aurora on July 20, 2012, had pleaded insanity.

However, Judge Samour on Wednesday said that whatever illness Holmes may have been suffering from, there were overwhelming "moral obliquity, mental depravity, ... anger, hatred, revenge, or similar evil conditions" also been behind his actions.

The judge concluded his statement by instructing the deputies who had brought Holmes into the chamber wearing shackles to "get the defendant out of my courtroom, please."

Holmes' defense lawyers said they had no plans to appeal.

pfd/ lw (Reuters, AP, AFP)