Feature: Colorado theater shooter's father pleads for his son in court

In the life-or-death sentencing hearing for the Colorado theater shooter Jamese Holmes, his father Robert Holmes surprised the courtroom with detailed testimony of an "excellent kid" and a loving, healthy, all-American family Tuesday.

The defense team's grand finale trio of witnesses at the end of this critical penalty phase features Holmes' sister, father, and mother in three consecutive days.

None have spoken publically since the 2012 massacre.

The most significant jury vote in the three-month trial is likely Thursday: whether to execute the man found guilty of killing 12 and wounding 70 at a midnight Batman movie three years ago.

Holmes, 27, in court Tuesday wearing a light-green, button-down shirt and dark khakis, looked without expression at his father, who faced his son while he delivered a compelling, two-hour testimony. Shooter Holmes has been heavily medicated since four months after the shooting.

The defendant swiveled his chair and turned his head with mild interest to view more than 70 exhibits, mostly childhood pictures, which were aired to the courtroom and narrated by his father.

Pictures showed the Holmes parents were extraordinarily close to their children, selflessly taking them on dozens of family trips - camping, fishing, the beach, boating, playing baseball, swimming, and more activities.

Several jurors smiled when they saw family photos of young Holmes with his curly-haired little sister Chris.

It was glaringly apparent that the elder Holmes, a terse, quick-minded academic genius and involved father, was also an emotionally limited man who had overcome social obstacles himself.

Robert told the jury about his family's lengthy history of mental disease, from his father to his twin sister Betty who receives a subsidy for her mental illness and is barely self-sufficient.

Holmes' parents have been in court virtually every day since the trial began in April, and Robert's decision to retire from his job as a credit card fraud analyst was influenced by the trial's schedule.

"I suspected he was unhappy," said Holmes' father, noting a huge personality shift in his son over Christmas break just a few months before he started amassing an arsenal and planning the shooting.

"Jim came home sick," Robert continued, when he returned home from his first semester at the University of Colorado's Ph.D. neuroscience program.

The graduate student was not just sick from mononucleosis, Robert Holmes noted, but was showing clear signs of mental illness.

For the first time the father saw his son behave very strangely - with distorted facial expressions and bulging eyes, the same "crazy" face he showed after being arrested. It was the last time the father saw the son before the shooting.

Family members of those slain by Holmes call him a monster and want him put to death.

But if only one of the 12 member jury shows "mercy", Holmes will spend the rest of his life behind bars and avoid execution.

The senior Holmes, a brilliant academic with a Berkeley Ph.D. in biostatistics, was born in Istanbul into a conservative military family.

He took the stand Tuesday wearing a yellow and blue-striped, collared shirt, his often flushed red face framed with short, white hair and a trimmed Manchu beard.

In four, short voicemails from father to son in the months just prior the shooting, the courtroom heard Robert's cheery voice tell his son he was "checking in" and loved him.

"Why do you still love him? " asked Tamara Brady, the defense's most experienced attorney.

"He's my son," said Robert Holmes gesturing toward his son, as members of the jury and media looked deeply pained. "We always got along well, and he's an excellent kid," he said.

The reserved, introverted nature of the Holmes family was shown when Robert described bringing baby Jimmy home from the hospital.

"It was interesting," Robert said without fanfare in an understated emotional response, noting his son had a number of introverted tendencies as well.

As he got older, "(James) had no friends over to the house, had no girlfriends, and played a lot of video games," the senior Holmes remembered.

The speed by which the jury dispatched Holmes' "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea two weeks ago, in fewer than 10 hours, and found him guilty on all 165 counts against him is a red flag they have little sympathy for the mass murderer. Endi