Before Samour imposed his sentence, he directed most of his hour-long comments toward the survivors and victims' families. He defended the justice system in the face of criticism about the outcome — in which jurors convicted Holmes of every count he faced but split over whether he should be executed, the harshest punishment allowed by state law. Samour pushed back against the suggestion that the case should have been settled by a plea bargain rather than going to trial.

Look at the outcome another way, he urged. Look at the information learned about the crime that would have remained hidden without a trial. See the opportunities that parents had to tell the jurors about their slain children.

People in the courtroom audience stared back stone-faced. But as Samour ticked through some of those details for each of the slain victims — Jonathan Blunk's strength, Jesse Childress' sense of adventure, Matthew McQuinn's charm — the faces in the courtroom softened. Some began to cry.

"We are different from the criminal who is on trial," he said.

That criminal quit on life, Samour said. He suffered some setbacks — a failure at school, a broken relationship — and he just gave up, deciding instead to commit "horrific, senseless, heinous, cowardly, shocking acts."

It was a credit to the justice system that a jury of strangers — a literal representation of the community that Holmes struck at — could hold him accountable for his crimes, Samour said. And it was a poignant footnote that at least one juror showed the killer the mercy that he showed none of his victims.

"Your healing is not tied to the defendant's fate," Samour said to the audience. "And you've shown that.

"You're not quitting."