AURORA | Jurors in the Aurora theater shooting trial heard Monday from a schizophrenia expert — arguably the defense’s star witness — who deemed James Holmes insane.
Raquel Gur, a University of Pennsylvania psychiatry professor, found Holmes insane and said he suffers from schizophrenia after she examined him in 2012.
Holmes’ defense team have said Gur is a world-renowned expert on schizophrenia.
Gur testified for about three hours Monday, and much of the focus was on her credentials.
According to her university’s website, Gur is a professor of psychiatry, neurology and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She also directs the Neuropsychiatry Section and the Schizophrenia Research Center.
Gur said she was part of a workgroup that wrote the schizophrenia section in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the go-to reference of mental issues that has been mentioned several times at the trial.
She said schizophrenia has long been her area of expertise and said the disease is a particularly complex one, with “overlapping clinical features.”
In some cases, people can appear to be living normal lives but they are actually in the throes of schizophrenic delusions. In one case, Gur said she had a patient who seemed fine — he was dating, working, driving a car — but he was completely convinced that the government was poisoning him through tap water.
Gur said the first criminal case she worked on was Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber.” She found him to be schizophrenic but because he accepted a plea deal, she never testified in court.
Later, in 1999 she examined Rusty Weston, who opened fire on Capitol Hill in 1998, killing two. That case also didn’t go to trial, so Gur said she was not called to testify.
She also examined Jared Loughner, the man who killed six people and wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011. Loughner’s case didn’t go to trial, either.
In almost every case, including Loughner’s, Gur said it was the defense team that contacted her, but she insisted she didn’t have a bias against prosecutors.
District Attorney George Brauchler didn’t object to the court qualifying Gur as an expert, but Brauchler noted this was only the second time she has ever been deemed an expert and testified in criminal court. And, Brauchler said, she doesn’t have the same forensic background as some other psychiatrists who have testified, and she isn’t board certified as a psychiatrist or a neurologist.
The two sides spent much of Monday morning arguing outside the presence of the jury about what information Gur could present after taking the stand.
Prosecutors say much of the information, including test results and some of Gur’s research into schizophrenia, wasn’t shared with them until just this week.
“This is shift-on-the-fly, last-second stuff,” Brauchler said.
But the defense said much of the research was included in Gur’s résumé, a copy of which they gave the prosecution several years ago.
Samour allowed much of the information but said he would allow prosecutors to make specific objections during Gur’s testimony.
Gur is expected to continue to testify Tuesday.
Holmes is accused of killing 12 and wounding 70 others during a July 2012 attack on a packed Aurora movie theater. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Monday marked the trial’s 43rd day and the defense is expected to wrap its case this week.
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