Colorado theater shooter James Holmes passed up a last chance Wednesday to speak in court and help save himself from execution.
Holmes kept his silence after the jury weighing his fate heard from a final witness, a young woman who lost both her 6-year-old daughter and her unborn child in the July 2012 Aurora massacre.
Asked by Judge Carlos Samour if he wanted to take the stand or make a statement, Holmes said he did not.
Holmes has repeatedly declined to testify at the trial, which began on April 27. He was convicted last month, and the same jury is now considering whether Holmes deserves the death penalty or to spend the rest of his life in prison for killing 12 people and injuring 70 at a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises."
Prosecutors and defense lawyers will deliver their closing arguments in the penalty phase on Thursday.
The penalty phase's testimony culminated on Wednesday with Ashley Moser, who wept on the stand as she described the emptiness of her life since her 6-year-old daughter, Veronica, was killed in the massacre.
Moser, pregnant at the time of the shooting, was critically injured, and also lost her unborn child. She testified from a wheelchair.
"I don't know who I am anymore, 'cause I was a mom when I was 18, and that's all I knew how to be," Mosley said.
Some jurors cried during her testimony, prompting Samour to warn jurors not to be swayed by their emotions.
Jon SchuppeJon Schuppe is an enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
Jacob RasconJacob Rascon is an NBC correspondent based in Dallas. He reports for all NBC News platforms including NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, the Today Show and NBCNews.com.
Rascon joined NBC from KNBC in Los Angeles in the summer of 2014. Since that time, he has led the network's coverage of the largest wildfire in Washington state history, the crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo over the Mojave desert and deadly tornadoes in Mississippi. He reported from Havana immediately following the announcement that the United States would resume diplomatic relations with Cuba after fifty years.
At KNBC, he helped lead the station's coverage of devastating California wildfires, mudslides and floods, the LAX shooting rampage, the manhunt for ex-LAPD fugitive Christopher Dorner and the Huntington Beach riots.
Prior to KNBC, Rascon worked at KFOX in El Paso, helping lead the station's coverage of devastating Texas wildfires, floods and ice storms, and illegal immigration, cartel violence and border politics.
Prior to KFOX, Rascon worked with ABC News in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, standing among more than one million Egyptians as they demanded the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, then Egypt's president.
He also worked at the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper in Salt Lake City, Utah and KBYI radio in Rexburg, Idaho, and even and reported out of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Rascon lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and three children.
Associated Press contributed.
