James Holmes | featured news

The judge in the case of Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes ruled on Monday to keep nearly all relevant court documents sealed from public view, and keep a gag order in place, saying disclosure of records could damage the investigation, and the defendant’s access to a fair hearing.

Attorneys for mass murder suspect James Holmes told a district judge Thursday that their client is mentally ill, setting the stage for an insanity defense for the man charged with murdering 12 people and injuring 58 in a movie theater rampage.

US news media will apply at a court hearing later to weaken a gag order on the case of the man accused of last month's Colorado cinema massacre. The alleged gunman, James Holmes, 24, is expected to be present for the hearing, as more than 20 news groups ask a judge to unseal documents.

The psychiatrist who treated suspected movie-theater shooter James Holmes contacted a University of Colorado police officer to express concerns about Holmes's behavior several weeks before his alleged rampage, ABC News reported, citing unnamed sources.

The psychiatrist who was treating Colorado movie massacre suspect James Holmes warned a University of Colorado threat-assessment team that he could be a danger, but no action was taken because he soon dropped out of school, the Denver Post reported.

Prosecutors are expected to formally charge James Eagan Holmes with multiple counts of first degree murder on Monday in the shooting deaths of 12 people at a movie theater.

Court records confirmed Friday that James Eagan Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist before he allegedly opened fire in a Colorado movie theater last week, killing 12 people and wounding dozens of others. The disclosure came in a motion(.pdf) seeking a hearing on what Holmes' lawyers called inappropriate leaks to the news media. The motion was granted, and the hearing is scheduled for Monday.

James Holmes inhabited an academic world so wondrous it could unlock the chemical code to human behavior, so complex that few outside the nation's brilliant cloister of neuroscientists could begin to comprehend it.

The man accused in the movie theater massacre at the opening of the new "Batman" film mailed a notebook detailing his plans to a psychiatrist at his university before the attack, Fox News reported on Wednesday, as the first funeral was held for one of the 12 people killed.