FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A defense lawyer on Tuesday urged jurors to spare the life of Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who murdered 14 students and three staff members at a Parkland high school, saying he was “doomed from the womb” because his birth mother drank heavily and smoked crack cocaine while pregnant.
Jurors heard the plea for mercy after nearly three months of trial for Cruz, 24, who last year pleaded guilty to committing Florida’s deadliest school shooting.
The Broward Public Defender’s Office argued that Cruz suffered from fetal-alcohol spectrum disorder caused by his hard-drinking, drug-addled biological mother, leading him to a life of violent outbursts and troubling behavior in school.
“In a civil society, do we kill brain damaged and mentally ill, broken people?” Broward Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill asked jurors during Tuesday’s closing arguments. “Do we? I hope not.”
Jurors on Wednesday are expected to begin deliberating whether to sentence Cruz to death or life in prison for the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
The state, meanwhile, argued that Cruz’s tumultuous upbringing and mental-health problems were not enough to outweigh the details of the savage — and methodically planned — rampage.
“The plan was goal directed. It was calculated,” Broward prosecutor Mike Satz told jurors. “It was purposeful, and it was a systematic massacre.”
Satz, his voice cracking as he finished his closing argument, read the names of each of the murder victims gunned down. “The appropriate sentence for Nikolas Cruz is the death penalty,” Satz said.
For Cruz to get the death penalty, the seven-man, five-woman jury must be unanimous in their recommendation to the judge, who would ultimately deliver the sentence. Anything else will result in a sentence of life in prison.
If jurors do not reach a decision, they will be sequestered in a hotel and return Thursday to continue deliberating.
It was the deadliest U.S. mass shooting case to go to trial — most often, mass shooters are killed by police, or they kill themselves.
The massacre was a grimly seminal moment in Florida history, leading to a wave of student gun-control activism, the passing of a law restricting some access to firearms and scrutiny on the police response to the mass shooting. The rampage also led to criticism of how Broward’s school district handled Cruz’s case — in the aftermath, the former superintendent was charged with perjury, and four school board members were suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis over the mismanagement of a campus security program.
There was never any doubt that Cruz was guilty.
He was arrested within hours of the shooting, identified as the gunman by eyewitnesses and via video surveillance, and confessed to police detectives. Within days of his arrest, the Broward Public Defender’s Office acknowledged his guilt, and offered to have him plead guilty immediately if prosecutors waived the death penalty.
Then-Broward State Attorney Satz chose to press forward with seeking the death penalty.
Even though he left office after four decades, Satz was hired to lead the prosecution team. In October 2021, Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, setting the stage for a jury to be chosen for the “penalty phase” of the trial.
To secure a death sentence in Florida, prosecutors have to show the crime had “aggravating” factors that outweighed any “mitigating” factors. In Cruz’s case, prosecutors say those aggravating factors included the “heinous, atrocious and cruel” nature of the murder, the calculated nature of the massacre, that he knowingly creating a “great risk of death to many persons,” and his conviction for battering a Broward deputy months after his arrest.
During the trial, prosecutors called more than 90 witnesses that included students and school staff who survived the massacre, some of whom suffered debilitating wounds. Jurors saw the graphic video surveillance footage of Cruz mowing down his victims on the first and third floors of the freshman building.
Satz said he was “hunting his victims” and returned to shoot wounded students on the first and third floors of the freshman building. “He went and finished them off. He made sure they were dead,” Satz said.
The ambush wasn’t spur of the moment either. Satz argued that Cruz, far from brain damaged, carefully planned his attack: He researched mass shootings, purchased an exhaustive supply of equipment and bullets, and took an Uber ride to the school.
“He has the ability to plan, to plan well,” Satz said. “He accomplished his plan.”
Forensic pathologists also told jurors about the autopsies that revealed the gaping wounds caused by the high-velocity bullets fired by Cruz’s rifle. The jury also viewed videos Cruz made on his cellphone before the attack, vowing to kill at least 20 people and garner notoriety as the “next school shooter.”
In heart-wrenching testimony, relatives of the murdered also took the witness stand to remember their loved ones — and detail the emptiness and depression caused by the violent, unexpected deaths. And on the final day of the state’s primary case, jurors toured the site of the massacre, the freshman building still stained with blood, and littered with shattered glass and discarded Valentine’s Day cards and gifts.
During Tuesday’s arguments, Satz repeatedly pointed to Cruz’s comments posted on YouTube in the months before the massacre as evidence that he was highly functioning and capable of planning ahead. In his posts, Cruz vowed violence, and in one, wrote that he loves to “see families suffer.”
“He’s anticipating what his actions of murder is going to do to the families,” Satz said. “He’s thinking ahead, just like playing chess.”
Prosecutors, in a rebuttal case, called a neuropsychologist to the stand in an attempt to show that Cruz was faking test scores to get a diagnosis of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
Satz argued that Cruz suffered solely from “anti-social personality disorder.”
“There is no brain damage,” Satz said. “There is damage to his personality.”
McNeill, on Tuesday, didn’t dispute that Cruz suffered from that disorder, but insisted he was also afflicted with the fetal alcohol disorder.
The defense case lasted 11 days and featured 26 witnesses. Among them: Cruz’s biological sister, who did not grow up with him but detailed their mother’s alcohol consumption and drug usage and a nationally known fetal alcohol researcher who testified that Cruz’s birth mother, Brenda Woodard, drank heavily during her pregnancy with the future school shooter.
“He did not have control over who his biological mother was. He had no control how much Colt 45 (malt liquor) Brenda drank when he was growing in her belly,” McNeill told jurors, adding: “Her number one priority was not prenatal care. It was her addiction.”
After his birth, Cruz was immediately adopted by Lynda and Roger Cruz, and raised in a spacious Parkland house. They later adopted Zachary Cruz, who was born to Woodard after Nikolas.
Jurors also heard from educators who witnessed Cruz’s outbursts and violence toward other young students; and psychologists and psychiatrists who dealt with him during his school years. The defense painted Lynda Cruz — her husband later died — as failing to follow up to get Cruz the mental-health services that he needed.
“Lynda wasn’t thinking logically,” McNeill said. “She was an overwhelmed and lonely mother of two very difficult children.”
McNeill reminded jurors that Cruz accepted responsibility when he pleaded guilty one year ago, and that he would spend the rest of his life in prison if they rejected the death penalty.
McNeill said: “Sentencing Nikolas to death will literally serve no purpose other than vengeance.”
