San Diego, California - A California lawyer retained by the family of James Holmes, accused of killing 12 people in a Colorado movie house, was scheduled to make her first formal statement on the case on Monday, her office said.
The news conference by attorney Lisa Damiani was scheduled for 1 p.m. PDT (4 p.m. EDT/2000 GMT) just hours after Holmes, 24, made his first court appearance in the case in a courtroom in Colorado.
Damiani was expected to speak outside her offices in San Diego, her office said. Details of her expected remarks were not released.
Police say Holmes was dressed in body armor and toting three guns when he opened fire at a packed midnight screening of the new Batman movie at a theater complex in the Denver suburb of Aurora in the early hours of Friday. Twelve people were killed and 58 were wounded.
The former neuroscience student also left his apartment booby-trapped with explosives that police said could have destroyed the apartment complex. They conducted a controlled detonation over the weekend.
Police say they are still searching for a motive for the crime, which baffled fellow students and acquaintances. They described him as a quiet high-achiever whose past gave little inkling that anything was amiss.
At the hearing the judge set a date of next Monday for formal charges to be filed. - Reuters