10/13/2022
A jury said Thursday that it has reached a decision on whether to recommend that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz be executed for the 2018 massacre that killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The recommendation was not immediately released and came in the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz is shown at the defense table after the defense team announced their intention to rest their case during the penalty phase of Cruz’s trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. Cruz previously plead guilty to all 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the 2018 shootings.
The decision promises an end to a three-month trial that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of the still blood-spattered building.
The jury’s decision must be unanimous if it intends to recommend the death penalty, and if that happens, it will be up to Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer to make a final decision. If all jurors can’t agree on recommending death, then Cruz would get life in prison.
During the prosecution’s rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz’s smooth movements with the gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological disorders, as claimed by his attorneys.
Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they say his birth mother’s excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.
Full Link (Tampa Bay Times) Here
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