Aurora theater shooting trial cost at least $3 million; total tab may never be known

From The Denver Post:  Jailing, evaluating and prosecuting the man who committed the Aurora movie theater shooting cost taxpayers at least $3 million, but the final expense of one of the mostly closely watched court cases in Colorado history may never be known.

The $3 million tab was compiled by The Denver Post following multiple open-records requests over the past year. It covers the amount spent from 2012 through 2015 specifically on preparing for and seeing through the trial of James Holmes.

Nearly $1.6 million of the cost was covered by federal grants.

When including the salaries of judges, prosecutors, sheriff’s deputies and other government employees who spent most or all of their time on the case — but who would have been paid regardless — the total cost rises to more than $7 million.

And there’s still a big chunk of expense missing from that amount. The state’s taxpayer-funded public defenders — who represented Holmes — are not required to disclose what they spend on a case. Doing so, they say, would violate ethics rules and subject poor defendants to lower standards of attorney-client confidentiality.

Generally, the office of the state public defender reports having spent nearly $2 million on death-penalty and potential death-penalty cases since July 2002, not including staff salaries.

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