Holmes sentenced to life for Colorado theater massacre

A Colorado jury on Friday sentenced James Holmes to life in prison without parole for the July 2012 murder of 12 people inside a movie theater in the city of Aurora.

The prosecution was seeking the death penalty.

Holmes, 27, was found guilty June 16 on 165 charges for fatally shooting 12 people and wounding 70 others during a showing of a Batman movie.

The nine women and three men on the jury found earlier this week that Holmes, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, was aware of his actions when he burst into the theater, hurled tear gas canisters and began shooting moviegoers indiscriminately.

That finding was a prerequisite for imposing the death penalty, but jurors were ultimately unable to reach a unanimous verdict to sentence Holmes to execution by legal injection.