After less than three hours of weighing sentences, the jury in the James Holmes trial has reached a verdict.
The court will convene 12:30 p.m. MST on Monday to announce whether Holmes, who was found guilty on all 165 charges earlier this month for opening fire on a movie theater in 2012, will be considered for the death penalty, or will instead receive life in prison without possibility of parole.
In order to reach a death penalty sentence, the jury will have to unanimously agree that the "aggravating" factors in the crime outweigh the "mitigating" factors, such as Holmes' otherwise spotless criminal history, his documented mental illness, and testimony from the shooter's mother and father, who pleaded for mercy on their son's behalf before the court late last month.
As The Associated Press reports, Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. enumerated more than 50 such mitigating factors in court, including:
• All experts agree that Holmes suffers from schizophrenia, is not faking the illness that caused the events, and if he had been healthy, the crimes would not have taken place.
• "Holmes was genetically loaded to experience a psychotic disorder," given the extensive history of schizophrenia on his father's side of the family.
• He was 24 in 2012, the age when schizophrenics most frequently experience the onset of mental illness.
• He was never arrested before of a crime.
• He was raised in a loving home, surrounded by caring friends and neighbors.
• Many people who encountered him later in Colorado missed signals that his mind was deteriorating.
• The drugs he was prescribed before the attack could have increased his mania and other dangerous symptoms.
• He remains on anti-psychotic and anti-depressive medicine today to treat brain diseases for which there is no cure.
• Holmes still struggles to explain, even years later, why his "mission" took such irrevocable control over his mind.
• His mental illness was, and still is, the sole cause of his shooting.
• Committing the attack was not an act he enjoyed or took pleasure in.
• Despite the horrific crime, Holmes has friends and family who continue to love and care about him.
"When does mitigation outweigh aggravation? When the mitigation is the cause of the aggravation," defense attorney Tamara Brady told the jurors in closing arguments on Thursday. "Mitigation is the character and background of James Holmes. It is anything that you individually, each one of you, consider for a life sentence."
Should any one of the jurors decide those mitigating factors make the death penalty inappropriate, Holmes will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, and that will be the end of the trial.
If, however, they unanimously push forward with the death penalty, the trial will enter a third and final phase, wherein the court will hear testimony from victims and the relatives of those killed in the shooting.
"On July 20, 2012, with a long-standing hatred for mankind in his heart … he made a decision to massacre, and he did," District Attorney George Brauchler said at the end of closing statements on Friday, gesturing at Holmes, who sat expressionless next to his attorneys.
"Can anything outweigh that? No," he said. "No.”