Colorado theater shooter James Holmes will be sentenced to life in prison without parole after a jury failed to agree Friday on whether he should get the death penalty for his murderous attack on a packed movie premiere.

The nine women and three men said they could not reach a unanimous verdict on each of the murder counts. That automatically eliminates the death penalty for the failed neuroscientist, who blamed his calculated murders of 12 people on mental illness.

A rule of law that says the opinion of one juror can trump the opinion of the other eleven borders on insane.  We would never consent to such a rule for the guilt verdict.  In no state of the union does a jury hung 11-1 for conviction produce an acquittal.  Why does any state have such a rule for the penalty phase?

States that have this crazy rule need to get rid of it.  A hung jury on penalty should trigger a retrial with a new jury, as it does in California and Arizona.