A jury will start to deliberate today on whether to recommend the death penalty for the guy who murdered 17 people on Valentine’s Day in 2018 at a Florida high school after three months of testimony.
The planned murder of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students in Parkland, Florida, was admitted to by Nikolas Cruz, 24, last year. One of the bloodiest school shootings in American history occurred there.
Tuesday’s closing statements from both sides came to a close with the prosecution—which is seeking the death penalty—characterizing Cruz as a cold-blooded killer. Cruz’s defense lawyer was pleading for compassion and the life sentence as the only alternative choice.
On Wednesday morning, the 12 jurors will get legal instruction from Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer in preparation for their verdict. After then, the jury members will be locked up to deliberate.
Cruz, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, had been kicked out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas. He expressed “extreme regret” and pleaded guilty, asking to be given another opportunity to do good.
By his own admission, Cruz said that five years prior to the Valentine’s Day disaster, he had first considered carrying out a school shooting while still in middle school.
He said that he chose Valentine’s Day to ensure that it would never again be observed at the school.
He bought an AR-15-style semi-automatic gun almost precisely a year before the rampage, and his preparations became serious about seven months beforehand as he did research on prior mass shooters, stating he sought to benefit from their experience.
Following three months of testimony, both sides’ lawyers made one last pitch on Tuesday for the death penalty or a life sentence.
The prosecution and defense agreed that the assault in 2018 that left 17 people dead was terrible, but they argued in their closing statements on whether it was a wicked crime deserving of the death penalty or one committed by a damaged individual who should serve a life sentence in jail.
Mike Satz, the lead prosecutor, and Melisa McNeill, the defense attorney, presented the 12 jurors with opposing perspectives on what motivated Cruz’s assault at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018.
Cruz, who is a sociopath in layman’s words, was motivated by antisocial personality disorder, according to Satz.
He said that Cruz should be executed because, for seven minutes, he wandered a three-story school building, “seeking his victims.” He returned to the injured victims as they lay helpless and “finished them off” with his semiautomatic weapon in the AR-15 type.
Satz cited Cruz’s online writings and videos in which he expressed his intention to kill people, for example when he stated, “No compassion, no questions, double tap.” I’m going to murder a lot of people, including kids.
As the three-month experiment came to an end, Satz stated, “It is claimed that what one writes and says is a window into their soul.” He described the murders as “constantly horrible, awful, and cruel.”
Cruz and McNeill have never refuted what he did, according to McNeill, who also said that “he understood right from wrong and he chose wrong.”
She said, however, that the former Stoneman Douglas student was “a shattered, brain-damaged, psychologically sick young man,” who was doomed from the moment of his birth due to his biological mother’s extensive drinking and drug usage throughout pregnancy.
McNeill pleaded in favor of a life sentence without the possibility of parole and promised the judge he would never be let free again.
On Tuesday, Scherer advised them to carry “at least a few days’ worth” of clothes and medicines with them while they were in the decision-making process.
To propose that a judge sentence Cruz to death under Florida law, a jury must reach a unanimous verdict.
The punishment trial started in July and has included evidence from gunshot survivors as well as footage taken on students’ mobile phones showing them screaming for assistance or speaking in whispers as they hid.
The defense introduced witnesses who discussed Cruz’s mental health issues, which were brought on by his biological mother’s drug usage while pregnant.
Following mass shootings in May at a school in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers, as well as another in May at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, which claimed the lives of 10, attention has been drawn once again to gun violence in the United States.