FORT LAUDERDALE, FL –
The criminal trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz begins Monday with the jury hearing opening statements and then first evidence about the 2018 massacre that left 14 students and three staff members dead at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The panel of seven men and five women, backed by 10 alternates, will hear from lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who is expected to highlight Cruz’s brutality as he stalked a three-story classroom building, firing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. in the corridors and in the classrooms. Cruz would sometimes walk up to wounded victims and kill them with a second volley of gunfire.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder; the only thing she is contesting is the death penalty sentence that prosecutors are seeking. Jurors can only sentence him to death or life in prison without the possibility of parole for the Feb. 14, 2018, shootings. The Stoneman Douglas alumnus’ trial, expected to last about four months, was supposed to start in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic and legal fights delayed it.
Defense attorneys won’t say when they will make their opening statements: at the start of the trial or when they begin making their case in a few weeks. The latter strategy would be rare and risky because it would give the prosecution the only word before jurors examine lurid evidence and hear harrowing testimony from shooting survivors and victims’ parents and spouses.
If lead advocate Melisa McNeill gives her statement, she will likely emphasize that Cruz is a young adult with lifelong emotional and psychological problems who allegedly suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and abuse. The goal would be to temper jurors’ emotions as they listen to the prosecution’s case, making them more open to considering the defense’s arguments later.
The Parkland shooting is the deadliest to come to trial in US history. Nine other gunmen who killed at least 17 people died during or immediately after the shooting, either by suicide or by police shooting. The suspect in the 2019 murder of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.
After the openings, which are limited to 90 minutes each, the prosecutors’ first witness will be called. They haven’t said who it will be.
When the jury finally gets the case this fall, it will vote 17 times on the question of recommending the death penalty: once for each of the victims.
Each vote must be unanimous; a non-unanimous vote for any of the victims means that Cruz’s sentence for that person would be life in prison. Jurors are told that in order to vote for the death penalty, the aggravating circumstances that the prosecution has presented for the victim in question must, in their judgment, “outweigh” the mitigating factors presented by the defense.
Regardless of the evidence, any member of the jury can vote for life in prison for mercy. During jury selection, the panelists said under oath that they are able to vote for either sentence.