Judge in theater shooting possesses cool head, strong will
Should prosecutors be allowed to show a paralyzed mother a photo of her slain 6-year-old daughter while she testified in the Colorado theater shooting trial?
Legal observers say he has handled the massive death penalty case with care and foresight, all while keeping an eye out for jurors and victims.
Vast media coverage of the July 20, 2012, attack and its far-reaching impact prompted the judge to summon 9,000 prospective jurors in one of the largest and most complicated selection processes in U.S. history.
The decision to allow it was one of dozens of delicate choices Samour has had to make during the trial, which has been a struggle between prosecutors and defense attorneys over how much pain and gore is too much.
The defendant does not have a constitutional right to a sanitized trial, Samour said after Holmes' lawyers asked him to bar photos showing blood on theater seats and aisles.
Yet he wouldn't let prosecutors play a video of police cars shuttling dying victims into a hospital ambulance bay and their bloodied bodies on gurneys.
"Judges are humans, and you really have to sit in on a case like this to fully appreciate how hard that makes the judge's job," said Terry Maroney, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who has studied the impact of judges' emotions on criminal cases.
Before the theater shooting, he was best known for ordering a reluctant prosecutor to file sexual assault charges against two men in 2009.
Before the shooting trial began, defense attorneys sought to have him replaced, calling him hostile, biased and disparaging toward them.