FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Attorneys for Florida school shooting gunman Nikolas Cruz reversed course Wednesday, saying they will not present the results of a highly controversial brain scan that they said supports their claim that the serial killer suffers from fetal alcoholism. syndrome.
Cruz’s attorney, Casey Secor, told Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer that they will not show the jury the controversial “quantitative electroencephalogram,” or qEEG, that Cruz had last year. The test’s sponsors say it provides useful support for diagnoses such as fetal alcohol syndrome, which Cruz’s attorneys say helped create his lifelong mental and emotional problems. Prosecutors and critics say the test is unproven or even garbage.
“We don’t trust those kinds of scans and comparisons,” Secor told the judge. He did not explain the decision.
Cruz’s attorneys say fetal alcohol syndrome is a factor that led to his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 14 students and three staff members dead. The sides were set to discuss the qEEG results before Scherer this week without the jury present before the defense began its case Monday with depositions from their attorneys. initial statement.
cross, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder: The trial is only to decide whether the Stoneman Douglas alumnus is sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.
The qEEG test is an extension of the electroencephalogram, or EEG, which has been common in medicine for a century. Brain waves are measured to help doctors diagnose epilepsy and other brain conditions.
But qEEG analysis, which has been around since the 1970s, goes one step further: a patient’s EEG results are compared to a database of brain waves taken from normal or “neurotypical” people. Although qEEG findings cannot be used to make a diagnosis, they can support findings based on the patient’s history, examination, behavior and other tests, supporters maintain.
Cruz’s prosecutors and other critics say the tests have never been shown to be valid and that two tests on the same person can have very different results. That was what happened with Cruz.
The defense will still have evidence about Cruz’s troubled life and emotional and mental problems that they can present to the court. jury of seven men and five women and 10 alternates.
Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team will try to persuade at least one juror that the mitigating circumstances in Cruz’s life outweigh the aggravating factors presented by prosecutors during her case, which began July 18 and ended July 4. of August. The vote in favor of death must be unanimous. or Cruz stays with life. A jury can also vote for life for mercy for Cruz.
They have statements from their late biological mother that she abused alcohol and cocaine during pregnancy. They also have reports that give circumstantial evidence of her mental illness. Cruz was expelled from preschool for hurting other children. During his years in public school, he spent a lot of time in a center for students with emotional problems. He also received years of mental health treatment.
Then there are the circumstances of your life. Cruz’s adoptive father died in front of him when he was 5 years old, he was bullied by his younger brother and his brother’s friends, he was allegedly sexually abused by a “trusted partner”, he cut himself and abused animals, and his mother foster mother died less than four months before the shooting.
His youth will also be an issue: He was 19 when the shooting happened.
The defense will try to come back the terrible evidence which was exposed by the prosecution, crowned by the visit of the jury on August 4 to the three-story building that Cruz stalked with his AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle for seven minutes, firing about 150 shots through the corridors and classrooms. Jurors saw dried blood on floors and walls, bullet holes in doors and windows, and remains of balloons, flowers, and Valentine’s Day cards.
Prosecutors also filed graphic surveillance videos of the massacre; gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos of its aftermath; emotional testimony of teachers and students who witnessed the deaths of others; and four days of tearful and angry declarations of parents, spouses and other family members about the victims and how their the death of a loved one affected their lives. The jurors also watched video of Cruz calmly ask for a minute icee after the shooting and, nine months later, attacking a prison guard.
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