James Holmes: iPhone, Emails Of Alleged Aurora Shooter Will Be Evidence At Trial

James Holmes’ iPhone and emails will be used as evidence in his upcoming trial, after the judge overseeing the Aurora movie theater massacre case denied the defense’s attempts to block them.

Arapahoe County District Court Judge Carlos Samour rejected eight separate motions that were issued on Monday, which saw the defense try to stop jurors from hearing about evidence found in Holmes’ iPhone, computers, iPod, e-mails and bank records.

Reports suggest that Holmes’ iPhone contains integral evidence, which will play a very important role at the impending trial. On the phone, investigators are believed to have found pictures of the accused posing with several guns and of movie theater doors as he planned his attack.

On July 20, 2012, Holmes killed 12 people at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, while also wounding dozens more, just after they had sat down to watch The Dark Knight Rises. He then told police that he’d also booby trapped his apartment full of explosives, which was later confirmed to be true.

Defence lawyers had tried to argue that the search warrants used to obtain the documents from Holmes’ personal devices weren’t specific enough. Attorneys noted that officers didn’t use a a date range for the emails that they were after, which made their search “unconstitutionally overbroad.”

However, Samour rejected this argument, and he declared that because of the large scale of the attack, the investigation also needed to be just as huge.

Samour wrote, “No date range could have been justified. Officers realized that these were no impromptu crimes; extensive planning and preparation had obviously gone into the shooting and the booby-trapping of the apartment. But they had no way of knowing whether it had taken months, a year, two years, or longer to complete such planning and preparation.”

Also on Monday, Samour confirmed that prosecutors could use files that they’d obtained from Holmes’ credit union, despite the fact that they acquired them illegally.

Lawyers for the prosecution argued that the error was merely an honest mistake by police, which they then corrected when they learnt of it almost 12 months later. However, defence attorneys believed that the prosecution shouldn’t be allowed a “do-over” for this discrepancy.

Samour decided to side with officers on this issues too. He scribed, “There is no allegation of prosecutorial misconduct and no basis to sanction the prosecution. Police officers alone were responsible for the 2012 illegal search and seizure.”

Samour previously confirmed that Holmes’ statements about the bombs that were found in his apartment and the various pieces of evidence that authorities found in his abode could also be used in the case.

The trial will commence after Samour decides whether Holmes needs to undergo a second court ordered psychiatric evaluation. Previously, Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.