AURORA | Two and a half years after he opened fire on an Aurora movie theater, James Holmes sat in an Arapahoe County courtroom this week for the start of his jury trial.
The trial, which isn’t expected to be complete until the fall, started January 21 with jury selection.
The process of choosing 24 jurors — including 12 alternates — from a pool of 9,000 is expected to take almost five months. The initial phase alone, where jurors fill out the lengthy juror questionnaire, is expected to run well into February.
Experts say seating a jury in James Holmes’ first-degree murder trial is unlike any other in state history.
“I would think this would be the biggest jury call in the state’s history,” said Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor who now teaches law at university of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Once the jury is seated — likely in May or June — the size of the jury itself will be unique.
Alan Tuerkheimer, a senior litigation consultant for Zagnoli McEvoy Foley LLC. in Chicago, said that juries typically have just a few alternate jurors, sometimes as many as six. But 12 is unprecedented, he said.
“I have never seen that many alternates,” he said.
Court officials expect between 130 and 150 jurors to report to court Tuesday afternoon for the first day of jury selection in the Aurora theater shooting trial.
During the first day of jury selection, Judge Carlos Samour, Jr. said that while court officials have called 250 people to appear, only 188 of that initial group remain eligible. Some potential jurors have been dismissed because they have connections to people involved in the trial, and Samour said other summonses were undeliverable.
At each session, Samour said he expects between 130 and 150 prospective jurors will report.
After sending out a total of 9,000 summonses, Samour said there are about 7,000 potential jurors remaining in the pool.
When the jurors report, they will hear a 30-minute introductory speech from Samour, watch an 18-minute video that all jurors in the state watch and then receive their juror questionnaires.
According to court documents, the questionnaire includes 75 questions, but in court Tuesday, Samour said the questionnaire has 77 questions.
With that many questions, Samour said he expects some prospective jurors to need more than two hours to complete it, while others could finish in about 45 minutes.
“It is difficult to tell how long it’s going to take them to fill it out,” he said.
In an October order laying out the final version, Samour bluntly admitted that at 75 questions, it was lengthy.
“The questionnaire is extensive,” he wrote.
Steinhauser said jury questionnaires often try to extract some personal information about the clients — including their personal experiences with mental illness, law enforcement or other extremely private issues.
Because of that, the questionnaires are rarely if ever seen by the public.
“When we ask jurors for a lot of very personal and sensitive information, the goal is that the information be between the judge and the attorneys,” she said.
Steinhauser said she has tried cases where after the lawyers were done reviewing prospective juror’s answers, they were required to return the answers to the court.
In this case, Samour has ordered the two sides to destroy the questionnaires — including any electronic copies — once they are done with them.
In his opening remarks to jurors, Samour said jurors should answer honestly and in detail because those that don’t fill questionnaires out in detail stand a better chance of being called back for individual questioning.
From February through May, Samour said some jurors will be dismissed, and others will be called back for a second round of questioning as the court tries to whittle the pool to 100 to 120 potential jurors.
That group will be called back a third time in May or June for a two-day group questioning session, he said.
But, Samour said, those are only hopeful estimates.
“It is very difficult to estimate how long the process of selecting 24 jurors will take. Our best estimate is that it will take us until approximately May or June to select a jury,” he said.
The trial itself — including a possible death penalty phase — will then run from May or June into September or October, he said.
Because Holmes is appearing in court in the presence of potential jurors, he is allowed to wear civilian clothes. He sat quietly next to his lawyers wearing a black blazer, blue and white striped shirt and khaki pants.
Unlike previous hearings, where Holmes appeared wearing a jail jumpsuit with his hands and feet shackled, Holmes’ hands were not cuffed during jury selection. His left leg, however, was chained to the floor with a cable that is hidden from the jury’s view.