By Jessica Schladebeck
Source New York Daily News
Jurors in the death penalty trial of Nikolas Cruz have agreed he should spend the rest of his life behind bars for the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, the deadliest ever to unfold at a high school in the United States.
The Florida jury deliberated for about seven hours before coming back with their decision Thursday morning.
The sentence recommendation comes a year after Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder for the February 2018 shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Just 19 at the time, Cruz burst into the Parkland school on Feb. 14, 2018, and gunned down 14 students and three school staff members. Another 17 people were injured in the mass shooting.
“It was a systematic massacre,” Michael Satz, the lead prosecutor, said in closing arguments, adding that Cruz was “hunting his victims” as he stalked through the 3-story school building.
Satz during the months-long trial, made up of grueling testimony and a visit to the site of the massacre, specifically detailed how Cruz spent eight months carefully planning the attack. He did research online, with internet searches using keywords like “murder” as well as on how to carry out an act of mass violence.
Cruz’s lawyers, meanwhile, asked the jury to show sympathy and spare his life. Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill did not deny the gravity of her client’s violence, but asked the panel to see Cruz as a human separate from the gunman who killed more than a dozen people. She argued that he suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, which could account for his troubling and sometimes violent behavior patterns.
“In a civilized, humane society, do we kill brain-damaged, mentally ill, broken people?” McNeill asked.
Because of his plea, jurors were tasked only with determining whether Cruz will be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars.
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