Defense Urges Florida Jury to Spare Life of Parkland School Shooter

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz watches as Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill gives the defense's opening statement during the penalty phase of his trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Aug. 22, 2022. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool)

A defense attorney on Monday implored a Florida jury to spare the life of Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people in a 2018 high school mass shooting in the city of Parkland, citing brain damage linked to fetal drug and alcohol exposure as reason not to impose the death penalty.

Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty last October to committing premeditated murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about 30 miles north of Fort Lauderdale, in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members.

Melisa McNeil, Cruz’s lead public defender, told the 12 Broward County jurors that he should receive life in prison without parole due to mitigating factors including lifelong developmental delays and mental-health disorders that arose from his biological mother’s drug and alcohol abuse during pregnancy.

“Because of that, his brain was irretrievably broken, through no fault of his own,” McNeil told the jury.

Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill gives the defense's opening statement during the penalty phase of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz's trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Aug. 22, 2022. (Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Pool via Reuters)

Among the witnesses McNeil called after making her opening statement was Cruz’s half-sister, Danielle Woodard, who tearfully testified that their mother drank heavily and used drugs including cocaine while she was pregnant with Cruz.

Jurors must decide whether to sentence him to death or to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Prosecutor Michael Satz told jurors in July that Cruz, a 19-year-old expelled student at the time of the shootings, should be put to death for “goal-directed, planned, systematic murder—mass murder—of 14 students, an athletic director, a teacher, and a coach.”

McNeil on Monday acknowledged the horror of Cruz’s crime but reminded the jurors that they were under no obligation to vote for death even “in the worst case imaginable. And it is arguable that this is the worst case imaginable.”

Under Florida law, a jury must be unanimous in its decision to recommend that a judge sentence Cruz to be executed.

Cruz said when he pleaded guilty that he was “very sorry” and asked to be given a chance to help others.

The start last month of the trial’s penalty phase included testimony from students who were at school that day and cellphone videos in which terrified students cried for help or spoke in hushed whispers as they hid.