The judge in the Colorado theater shootings trial announced Thursday he will postpone the trial indefinitely while more psychiatric tests are considered.
The man accused in last year's movie theater attack that killed 12, wounded 58 and spurred new gun control laws in Colorado is a former San Diegan.
James Holmes once lived with his parents Robert and Arlene Holmes in Rancho Penasquitos and attended Westview High School in San Diego County.
Holmes' trial had been set to begin in February.
Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges stemming from the July 2012 attack.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and they want Holmes to undergo further evaluation of his sanity.
District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. scheduled hearings on further testing and other pre-trial issues for Dec. 17 and 18.
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Holmes' attorneys don't dispute that he committed the shootings, but his plea makes psychiatric evaluations -- which assess whether Holmes was sane at the time of the shootings -- the most important pieces of evidence.
If doctors who evaluated Holmes concluded he was insane, it would be much harder for prosecutors to persuade a jury to convict him of murder and sentence him to death.
If jurors agreed Holmes was insane, he would be committed indefinitely to the state hospital. He could one day be released If doctors there ever concluded Holmes' sanity had been restored, he could one day be released, but that is considered unlikely.
Colorado law defines insanity as the inability to tell right from wrong because of a mental disease or defect. An evaluation by the state mental hospital is mandatory for anyone who pleads insanity. Holmes underwent his last summer.
