CENTENNIAL – Sitting just feet from the Aurora theater shooting gunman, Chris Holmes dabbed her eyes Monday as she told jurors that he was a good brother who always had her back.

“I think he loved me very much,” the sister of James Holmes testified during the second part of the penalty phase of his trial. Holmes has been convicted of killing 12 people and wounding 70 in the July 20, 2012, attack.

The same jurors who convicted him are now considering whether he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Defense attorney Rebekka Higgs asked Chris Holmes, 22, about her relationship with her older brother, whom she has visited only once since the shooting.

“Do you still love him?” Higgs asked.

“I still love him,” Chris Holmes said.

Higgs showed a number of family photos on the video screens in the courtroom as Holmes’ sister testified. One showed the young brother and sister smiling broadly as they flossed their teeth.

“How do you feel when you look at it?” Higgs asked.

“Sad. Just sad,” Chris Holmes answered.

For the most part, Chris Holmes and her brother got along pretty well “until I got too annoying,” she told jurors.

“Did you like having a big brother?” Higgs asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It was nice to know that someone was always there.”

Holmes felt like her brother always had her back. When her brother grew annoyed with her, he never teased her or embarrassed her, she said.

Chris Holmes has come to court to see her brother, attending the hearings twice.

“It was nice even just to be in the same room,” she said.

She began crying as she described her brother smiling at her in the courtroom. She “can’t bring” herself to write her brother.

“I was told that everything I wrote could be used in the case,” she said. “I was scared.”