I Don't Want to Hear It
I was listening to Ben Markus on NPR reporting on the Aurora trial, driving slowly because I was paying more attention to his words than to the traffic around me. At least I wasn't texting. The trial of the young man accused of opening fire in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 is expected to take six months. The lawyers are introducing an insanity defense, so there will be days of explication and elucidation before the details of the shooter's mental state are exposed. Will it make a difference? He wielded the weaponry which took and damaged the lives of people whose only offense was watching a Batman movie. Of that, there is no doubt. Was he insane? Does it matter? Perhaps, as Ben Markus said, only in the penalty phase. His lawyers are expected to use the details to of his mental illness to lay the groundwork for a prison sentence instead of a death sentence. I managed to tell you all of that without once mentioning the name of the perpe...