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Colorado Cinema Killer 'Came To Slaughter'

The killer behind the Colorado cinema massacre considered a bomb or biological warfare before settling on a shooting so he could inflict more "collateral damage", a court has been told.

Prosecutors said two psychiatric exams found James Holmes to be sane, at the start of his trial over the attacks at a midnight Batman screening in 2012 that left 12 people dead and 70 injured.

He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to 166 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and an explosives offence.

If jurors decide he was not prevented from knowing right from wrong because of a mental illness or defect, he could face the death penalty being sought by the prosecution.

District Attorney George Brauchler set the scene as he spoke of the moment Holmes entered the movie theatre, before unleashing tear gas and walking up and down the aisles while firing at people who tried to flee

"Through this door is horror," he said.

"Through this door are bullets, blood, brains and bodies.

"Through this door, one guy who thought as if he had lost his career, lost his love life, lost his purpose, came to execute a plan.

"Four hundred people came into a box-like theatre to be entertained, and one person came to slaughter them."

He described Holmes' planning for the shootings as "meticulous" and said the once-promising neuroscience PhD student had told his ex-girlfriend he had an "evil" plan "to kill people" - but that she dismissed what he said as "theoretical."

Holmes' public defender, Daniel King, insisted 20 doctors who examined him in custody and a therapist who saw him before the shootings all agreed he suffers from schizophrenia, a psychotic brain disease that compelled him to kill.

He described the 27-year-old as "a good kid" who had no record of ever harming anyone before his deadly rampage at the showing of the Dark Knight Rises.

His parents, Robert and Arlene Holmes, in pleading for his life, have called their son a "human being gripped by a severe mental illness".

Under Colorado law, the burden falls on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was "not insane," Judge Carlos A Samour Jnr told the jury.

He said if Holmes acted with deliberation and intent - wilfully taking actions that he knew would kill people - then he should be found guilty even if he had mental problems.

Prosecutors allege Holmes planned the violence for months, buying a rifle, a shotgun, two pistols, tear gas canisters, body armour, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a chemical stockpile that turned his 800-square-foot apartment into a booby trap.

:: Watch a live stream from the court on skynews.com from 3.30pm BST