Columbine shooting survivor is potential juror at Aurora shooting trial

Columbine Shooting Survivor Is Potential Juror in Trial of Aurora Theater Shooter James Holmes

Quote :

When Juror [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] received his summons to report to jury duty in Colorado, he was overwhelmed with painful memories.

Now in his early thirties, the juror had been a student at Columbine High School when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire in 1999, killing 13 of his classmates and injuring 20 more. Among the victims: his prom date.

The man was even more horrified when he was assigned to the jury pool of James Holmes, who is charged with the Aurora theater shooting that left 12 people dead and injured least 70 others.

'My knee jerk reaction was, 'I can't do this,' he said in court on Monday, according to CBS News.

The juror says he had given the matter "tons of thought" and determined that he could be a more capable juror because he had experienced a mass shooting.

The juror said that it took "a decade of therapy to get over the shooting," but that he would be able to be fair and impartial.

The judge agreed, qualifying Juror [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] to move on to the final stage of jury selection.

Holmes, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, faces the death penalty in the shooting.

A final jury will be chosen in April.

Isn't the process to find jurors random? What are the odds that they pulled someone who was a survivor of Columbine?

I'm pretty sure the person being spoken about in the article is Nick Baumgart.

i think yor are right, it is nick...

Can I ask why you guys think it's Nick Baumgart? Simply because I see no clues that give me even an idea of who it is!

Wideawake wrote:

Can I ask why you guys think it's Nick Baumgart? Simply because I see no clues that give me even an idea of who it is!

The part about his prom date being a victim. Process of elimination, really. One of the victims was a teacher. Quite a few of them were either Freshmen and Sophomores, meaning they wouldn't have been able to go to the prom. His prom date would have been a female victim and how many of the murdered females went to the prom? The only one I can think of is Rachel Scott and wasn't Nick her date?

Unless, his prom date was a victim who survived the shooting. But the way the article is written, I am under the impression his prom date was murdered.

What are everyone's thoughts on the ethics of this? I'm really surprised he wasn't automatically disqualified.

At least in this case it's not really a question of whether or not Holmes actually did it, so there's not the issue of convicting an innocent person, but now you've got the guy trying to use the insanity defense, and a juror whose experience with a shooting was one where the shooters definitely planned it for a long time out of hatred. I don't know whether the insanity defense is justified for Holmes or not, but it doesn't seem very just to have a juror who could very well have a certain preconceived image of a mass shooter as a cold, calculating person motivated by hate due to his own experience. That's especially problematic if it is Nick Baumgart given all the controversy surrounding whether or not Dylan and Eric targeted Rachel Scott specifically.

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This seems to confirm it is Nick.

I read that damn article 3 times (the original) and not once did I pick up on the sentence about his prom date. Oops.

Based on what he has said ,Nick doesn't hate Eric and Dylan and was able to feel that way from fairly early on which is to his credit. I'm sure he is a nice guy but I don't know if anyone who has had this experience could be impartial enough to serve as fairly as a person should, especially in a death penalty case.Nice find, Juicy.

Turns out that the alleged survivor not only made the final cut, but was made head juror (foreman) too.

No way should he be a juror.

As [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said, there is a slim chance he will not already have a preconceived image of mass shooters and shootings. If he had to have a decade of therapy, not to mention friends killed by a mass shooter, he is going to have way to many strong feelings to give an unbiased verdict. Even if he is impartial (unlikely), he may well find it a very traumatic experience. Why risk putting a biased, traumatised juror on when they could simply avoid all worries by choosing someone else.

That's quite fucked up......