Weiner is also known for his earlier series of works focusing on the legal trial surrounding James Holmes and the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, which comment on the zeitgeist of a city rattled by mass violence and suggest peripheral issues relating to censorship within the American legal system. In the lead up to a 2016 exhibition, "Concrete Playground's" Sarah Ward described how "the community Denver artist Paul Weiner called his own was rocked by tragedy when a man opened fire in a Colorado movie theatre" and "the horrific events sparked another kind of art: a response." "5280 Magazine" describes how his redacted paintings, which are direct transcriptions of significant legal documents from this trial, "became more conceptual in nature" and "those dark black lines became a recurring element in Weiner's earliest explorations of the topic. "Young Space's" Kate Mothes describes the impact of "violence, especially in such close proximity to the Aurora cinema and its impact on his community" and how it "instilled an entirely new meaning and significance as an expression of self, the politics of painting, and his surroundings."