Attorneys in the sentencing trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz presented their closing arguments Tuesday, with the lead prosecutor making his case for a death sentence and the lead defense attorney arguing for a life sentence.
The closings wrapped up a nearly three-month trial, with a jury of seven men and five women determining whether Cruz will be given a death sentence or life in prison.
Deliberations are set to begin Wednesday morning.
Cruz, now 24, pleaded guilty last October to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
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During the state’s closing arguments, lead prosecutor Michael Satz listed the aggravating factors that required a death penalty in this case, calling the 17 murders "unrelentlessly cruel, heinous and atrocious."
Satz quoted one of Cruz’s three cellphone videos to show Cruz knew what he was doing.
The video recorded on Feb. 11, 2018, showed Cruz proclaiming, "Hello, my name is Nik. I’m going to be the next school shooter in 2018. My goal is to kill at least 20 people with an AR [rifle] and a couple of tracer rounds. I think I can get it done. Location, at Stonemen Douglas in Parkland Florida. It’s gonna be a big event and when you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am. Ha ha, you’re all gonna die. Can’t wait."
"That was his plan," Satz said. "He carried it out."
He pointed to Cruz's internet writings and videos, where he talked about his murderous desires such as when he wrote, “No mercy, no questions, double tap. I am going to kill a ... ton of people and children.”
“It is said that what one writes and says is a window into their soul,” Satz said.
The gunman, dressed in an off-white sweater, sat impassively during Satz’s presentation, occasionally exchanging notes with his attorneys.
A large number of the victims’ parents, wives and family members packed the section of the courtroom reserved for them, watching Satz intently, many of them weeping. Just minutes earlier, they had greeted each other with smiles, handshakes and hugs.
Satz, who served as Broward County state attorney for 44 years before stepping down early last year, meticulously went through the murders, reminding the jurors in order of how the victims were slain and how Cruz looked some in the eye before he shot them multiple times.
“They all knew what was going on, what was going to happen," Satz said.
He talked about the death of one 14-year-old girl. Cruz shot her and then went back to shoot her again, putting his gun against her chest.
"Right on her skin. She was shot four times and she died,” Satz said.
During her closing argument, lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill stressed Cruz’s poor mental, emotional, and physical health since before he was born to a mother with drug and alcohol addictions.
“Nikolas had no control over the crack [cocaine] she was smoking while he was growing in her belly,” she said.
Cruz is mentally ill and has neuro-developmental disorders and the defense team brought the best experts in the country to tell jurors this, she added.
McNeill also reminded the jurors of the immense responsibility of their life-or-death decision.
“You have to look into the soul of the person, at their entire life, and not just at what they did,” she said. “You hold his life in your hands."
McNeill finished by telling jurors to trust their instincts.
“[If you] look into your heart, look into your soul, the right thing, not the popular thing, is a life sentence,” McNeill said. “And if you ask yourself, ‘Am I making the right decision?’ If you follow the law, you’re making the right decision."
The trial, which began July 18, has progressed slowly. There was a nearly two-week pause following the defense's surprise resting of its case Sept. 14 after calling only about 25 of the 80 witnesses the attorneys had said would testify.
Prosecutors concluded their rebuttal case last week after playing a video clip from jailhouse interviews the gunman did with their psychologist, hoping it bolsters their contention that he wasn’t driven to kill by a mental disorder he couldn’t control, but planned his attack and chose to carry it out.
Parkland Shooter Death Penalty Trial
Satz kept his main case simple, focusing on Cruz's eight months of planning, the seven minutes he stalked the halls of a three-story classroom building, firing 140 shots with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, and his escape.
He played security videos of the shooting and showed gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos. Teachers and students testified about watching others die. He took the jury to the fenced-off building, which remains blood-stained and bullet-pocked. Parents and spouses gave tearful and angry statements about their loss.
The gunman's attorneys never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother's heavy drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Their experts said his bizarre, troubling and sometimes violent behavior starting at age 2 was misdiagnosed as attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, meaning he never got the proper treatment. That left his widowed adoptive mother overwhelmed, they said.
For the former Stoneman Douglas student to receive a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. Otherwise, his sentence will be life without parole.
