Death Penalty Sought For 'The Dark Knight Rises' Shooter

“They are trying to execute our client, and we will do what we need to do to save his life.”

This from Tamara Brady, one of the public defenders of James Holmes, who last year opened fire on a late-night showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“This is not an ordinary case,” Brady claims.

The statement comes as a reaction to Colorado prosecutors seeking the death penalty for the man who killed 12 people and injured 58 in Aurora during one of the most horrific, violent crimes in recent memory.

In court, the district attorney for Arapahoe County told the jury “For James Eagan Holmes, justice is death.”

Last week, a suggestion that Holmes would plead guilty for life in prison without parole was rejected. He is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.

Currently a plea of not guilty has been entered. Holmes’ defense may still submit a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Evidence collected from the psychiatrist Holmes spoke with just a few weeks before the massacre may come into play.

Holmes, a 25-year-old graduate student of neuroscience, has been hospitalized twice since his arrest, once for “potential self-inflicted injuries.” Officials determined he was a danger to himself and he was held for several days at a Denver psychiatric ward where he was “frequently in restraints.”

Colorado is not known as a death-penalty state. It has just three people on death row at the moment, and, in three decades, has only executive one person—Gary Lee Davis, who was put to death in 1997 for murder and rape.