Colorado theater shooter enters not guilty plea

The Aurora massacre suspect James Holmes has entered a plea of not guilty, with the judge announcing that he may be administered ‘truth serum’ over the killings.

Judge William Blair Sylvester announced on Tuesday in a Colorado court that the 26-year-old accused murderer can change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity at a later date, which would qualify him for a further ‘narcoanalytic interview’.

The former neuroscience PhD student may likely face a full mental evaluation and a second decision to undergo a lie detector polygraph test.

Meanwhile, prosecutors laid out a case that Holmes planned the massacre for months by accruing an arsenal of high-powered weapons and setting traps in his apartment to kill anyone who tried to enter after the mass shooting.

If a jury finds Holmes insane during the shooting, he would be committed to a state mental hospital where he has a chance to be freed if doctors find his sanity has been restored.

He faces 166 different counts relating to last year’s shootings, which took place during a midnight showing of the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises.

Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 70 others after he burst into the sold-out theater and began shooting people at random.

Since 2006, there have been 200 mass killings, including the Newtown, Connecticut massacre on December 14 when Adam Lanza killed 20 schoolchildren aged six and seven plus six adults before killing himself. In August, a killing spree at a Sikh temple left seven people dead.

Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the US, which averages 87 deaths each day, and another 183 are injured daily, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.