a day for james holmes to enter a plea. let me get one detail here from jennifer. did james holmes say anything, did he have to answer any questions or anything like that? he did not. they did waive they have a right to a preliminary hearing5m if he was okay with waiving that, so his attorneys briefly spoke to him, he nodded, listened and then indicated to them that he was okay with that, and so then they spoke back. he didn t actually speak, he didn t say any words today. reporter: yeah, no plea and he actually didn t say anything in court. so there you go. jenna: interesting. all right thank you very much with that breaking news from colorado. we ll have more on this new. rick: let s talk about it with dan shurr who is a former prosecutor and chip merlin a criminal defense attorney. dan, let me start with you. i ve got to ask you if first as someone who does not have a law degree, 24 counts of first-degree murder there were 12 victims. that s two counts of murder for each victi
the jury ultimately, one is for an intentional killing where you intend to kill the victim and one is for extreme i indifference to human life where you do some kind of behavior that doesn t care about the consequences. they can charge different theories and it s common in states around the country. rick: 116 counts of attempted murder, dan, and we know that there were 58 people who were wounded, what does this tell you about the prosecution s case? well this is pretty standard that you want to present both theories of murder and both theories for attempted murder to the jury so that you can get a conviction on either one or both. the case is pretty strong. we know who did the shooting we know the consequences of the shooting. we know how planned it was. the only option for the defense is to offer an insanity defense which is going to be extremely difficult for him to succeed with. rick: chip the only option is an insanity defense? well it would seem to be that way. there seems to
between being right and wrong n. this case it is the prosecution that has to show that he was sane and the defense obviously is going to have to have the rebuttal to show was insane, but that s not just because you are seeing a psychiatrist that proves you are insane at the time that this happened. rick: dan, what about the defendant s competence to stand trial? that is something we saw in the tucson shooter s case where he s getting medical treatment so in the future he may be able to stand trial. do you expect to see and hear those kinds of similar arguments from the defense with this defendant? the defense may raise that. we would expect them to raise anything they can. most likely he s facing a death penalty here and they are going to try to throw everything they can at the prosecution at the court to try to save this defendant s life. they may say he s not competent to stand trial but his actions during the shooting were so precise, so planned he knew which thaoet tore go to, he