Parkland trial: Jury begins deliberating death penalty for school shooter who killed 17

The jury began deliberating Wednesday on whether to recommend the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others in a shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland in February 2018.

The seven men and five women in the Broward jury began deliberating just before 11 a.m., and spent part of the afternoon listening to a court reporter read back the transcript of an expert defense witness. Jurors stopped deliberating just after 5:30 p.m., and were to spend the night sequestered in a hotel before resuming on Thursday morning.

“It is now your duty to make the appropriate sentence,” Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer told jurors before they began.

The long-awaited deliberations began after the jury spent nearly three months reviewing evidence and listening to witnesses who were at the suburban high school the day Cruz entered the freshman building armed with an AR-15-style rifle, killing 14 students and three staffers before escaping in the crowd of fleeing students.

Cruz, a former MSD student, was arrested within hours, was identified by witnesses as the gunman and confessed to the massacre. One year ago, Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. He also pleaded guilty to attacking a Broward Sheriff’s deputy in the county jail six months after the mass shooting.

The 12-person jury is only considering whether to recommend the death penalty for Cruz, 24, or send him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Under Florida law, any decision for death must be unanimous — anything else means an automatic life term.

On Wednesday afternoon, court reporters read to jurors earlier trial cross-examination testimony of defense expert Paul Connor, a neuropsychologist who testified Cruz suffered from alcohol fetal spectrum disorder, explaining the damaging effect alcohol can have on fetuses in the womb.

The jury had also asked to listen again to testimony from an expert witness for the prosecution, psychologist Richard Denney, who was called to rebut Connor’s testimony. But jurors later decided they did not need to hear his testimony after all.

Jurors asked to view the rifle Cruz used in the massacre, a weapon that had been rendered inoperable. But the Broward Sheriff’s Office told the judge that deputies couldn’t allow the weapon in for security reasons, even though Broward prosecutor Mike Satz pointed out that non-functioning firearms have long been allowed into the jury rooms.

“It’s absolutely preposterous,” Satz told the judge. “The Sheriff’s Office can’t control what goes back in evidence.”

Judge Scherer said the Sheriff’s Office was working to establish “protocols” to show the gun to jurors on Thursday morning.

The Broward Public Defender’s Office presented jurors with “mitigating” factors — a long list of facts about Cruz’s tumultuous life — that it hopes will sway at least one juror to vote for life.

READ MORE: As Parkland trial ends, defense urges jury to spare Nikolas Cruz the death penalty

During closing arguments, defense lawyer Melisa McNeill implored jurors to spare Cruz, saying he was “brain damaged and mentally ill” because his mother drank excessively and smoked crack cocaine while he was in the womb. Jurors heard about Cruz’s childhood tantrums, strange obsessions, violent behavior, academic struggles and trouble socializing, as well as what the defense said was his woefully inadequate mental health treatment.

“You literally have another human being’s life at stake,” McNeill said.

To secure a death recommendation, prosecutors have to prove “aggravating factors” outweigh the mitigating factors.

They presented seven factors to the jury: that Cruz had previous felony convictions, that he created a great risk of death to many persons, that the crimes were “heinous, atrocious or cruel,” the murders were “cold, calculated and premeditated,” that Cruz sought to disrupt a government function, that the three adult victims were public employees and the crime was committed during the course of a burglary.

Prosecutor Satz, in his closing argument, laid out the case that Cruz was far from a brain-damaged student who couldn’t resist his impulses.

He cast Cruz as cunning in his organization: researching even the most obscure mass shootings, purchasing tactical gear and plenty of ammunition, methodically shooting victims — in some cases, returning to finish them off as they lay wounded on the ground — and then escaping hidden among fleeing students.

“The plan was goal directed. It was calculated,” Satz told jurors. “It was purposeful, and it was a systematic massacre.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2022 at 10:47 AM.