Argumentative Essay: Let The Death Penalty Debate

James Eagan Holmes was described as a quiet, standoffish, 24-year-old graduate student from San Diego who had earned a bachelor's degree in neuroscience in 2010 from the University of California, Riverside. Holmes then enrolled at the University of Colorado in June of 2011, taking graduate courses in neuroscience at the university's campus in Denver. He later dropped out of a doctoral program at the University's medical school, where he had been doing research. In early 2012, Holmes began seeing Dr. Lynne Fenton, a University of Colorado psychiatrist, at a campus clinic. Holmes was seen by mental health professionals at the clinic eight times in 2012 between March 16, when he first walk in, and June 11, when he cut of therapy just weeks before strapping on protective gear, slinging an AR-12 across his chest and blasting his way through a suburban Denver movie theater. At the Century Aurora 16 complex in Aurora, Colorado,
“He is a human being gripped by severe mental illness. We realize treatment in an institution would be best for our son. We love our son, we have always loved him, and we do not want him to be executed.” The Holmes’s said that their son should be sentenced to life without parole and that the attention that would have gone into a trial should be dedicated to victim recovery. The letter, which was provided to The Denver Post (2014), was the first time that Holmes' parents had commented publicly about their son's actions and about the grief they have felt as a result. “Our family has not given interviews to the media because we do not want coverage of ourselves,” the couple wrote. “We mourn the deaths and the serious injuries and emotional trauma of the others who were in the theater. The focus should be on the injured and their