Massacre suspect 'could be drugged'

Accused Colorado theatre gunman James Holmes could be given "medically appropriate" drugs during psychiatric interviews and possibly face a polygraph test if he chooses to raise an insanity defence, the judge in the case said.

The ruling by Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester came a day before Holmes is scheduled to enter a plea in the case.

His defence lawyers have argued that Holmes should not be drugged while undergoing examinations by court-appointed psychiatrists.

Holmes, 25, is accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the July shooting rampage that killed 12 movie-goers and wounded 58 others during the screening of The Dark Knight Rises in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

It is one deadliest mass shootings in US history .

It is widely assumed that Holmes, a former neuroscience graduate student at the University of Colorado, will raise an insanity defence, as his public defenders have referenced their client'sunspecified mental illness at earlier hearings.

Prosecutors have 60 days after Holmes enters a plea to decide whether to seek the death penalty.

Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said last month he was adding a death-penalty lawyer to the case.

Prosecutors have depicted Holmes as a young man whose once promising academic career was in tatters as he failed graduate school oral board exams in June, and one of his professors suggested he may not have been a good fit for his doctorate programme.

They have said that in the lead-up to the shooting, Holmes lost his access to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus after making unspecified threats to a professor on June 12, and then began a voluntary withdrawal from his programme.

Sylvester, in court documents released on Monday, told Holmes that if he mounts an insanity defence, it would be "permissible to conduct a narcoanalytic interview of you with such drugs as are medically appropriate, and to subject you to polygraph examination."

Holmes's defence have objected, saying the use of statements compelled involuntarily from an interview while Holmes is medicated would violate due process.

They also argued that the use of a polygraph would be unconstitutional as the machine has been ruled unreliable.