August 7th, 2015
At around 11am today court was back in session for a very short time because the jury had sent out a request to view a specific video. The video in question, prosecution exhibit 1000, is a video of the crime scene. You can only imagine why the jury would want to view a video of the crime scene when trying to determine if the defendant should be sentenced to death!
The prosecution, obviously, had no problems with this. The defence originally didn't either, but then changed their minds and didn't want to jury to see the video. The judge disagreed because the video was already in evidence and he'd already instructed the jury they were allowed to see any of the evidence.
However, this is where things get weird, and I don't understand how court proceedings work. When the jury is deliberating, all the evidence is placed into the jury room with them. They can look at any item they want (guns, photos, printouts, journals, reports, etc.) anytime they want, and for as long as they want. But things that are electronic - videos, emails, audio recordings - are only sent back in their disc format and the jury has to request equipment to watch/view/hear the item. In this case, the judge will allow them to do that, but he'll only agree to send the equipment back for a limited time AND only allow them to watch the item once. Why? They can sit and stare at a gun for hours if they want - but they can't watch and rewind a video? That doesn't make sense to me. If the video was printed out in photos, they could look at them as much as they wanted, but because it's in electronic format, they can't. Is the court prejudice against electronic forms of evidence? Considering the world we live in, that's pretty stupid.
Court is back in recess and the jury is probably viewing the video by now.
And so ... we continue to wait ...
p.s. Considering Holmes sat through months of this trial barely moving or making any sort of facial expression or expressing any sort of emotion, I'm wondering what he's doing right now. He's obviously aware of what's going on, but either can't or won't react to it. So is he sitting in his cell right now just waiting, but not contemplating what all this means? Or is he aware of what this means and does he have thoughts and emotions about it? Is he capable of emotions? Can he feel scared? Regardless of whether he knew what he did was wrong, he must have some feelings about what happens to him. Is just not able to express those emotions, but he feels them. Or can he not feel them either? Has the combination of disease and drugs essentially eliminated his emotions? Or only removed his ability to show them? I don't know why I find this interesting, but I do.
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