Parkland shooting | Defense seeks life in prison instead of death for shooter

(Washington) The lawyer for the perpetrator of the 2018 Parkland, Florida high school shooting on Monday called on jurors to rule in favor of life in prison over the death penalty, arguing that his client was mentally ill.

Melisa McNeill notably highlighted the difficult childhood of Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people on February 14, 2018 in Parkland, a small town north of Miami, by opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle in the Marjory school Stoneman Douglas, from which he had been expelled a year earlier.

The 23-year-old, who pleaded guilty to murder in October, was born to a “homeless and mentally challenged” alcoholic and drug addicted mother, according to the lawyer.

His trial now focuses on whether he deserves the death penalty as requested by prosecutors. If only one juror objects, Mr. Cruz will be sentenced to an irreducible sentence of life imprisonment.

According to Melisa McNeill, the fact that Nikolas Cruz was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, then was diagnosed at age 3 with antisocial personality disorder and grew up in a broken and abusive home with an adoptive mother depressive and alcoholic, should lead to a reduction in her sentence and make her lean towards life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

“Nikolas Cruz’s decision to take an Uber to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and kill as many people as possible is not the start of Nikolas Cruz’s story,” she said.

Mr. Cruz did not receive the help he needed, while his teachers were aware that he was a danger to himself and others, Melisa McNeill further pleaded.

After his exclusion from school, Mr. Cruz “did not stop having mental problems. He kept having an emotional handicap, having a language impediment and needing help. But [cette aide] was gone,” she added.

The 12 holders and 10 substitutes constituting the jury at the trial of Nikolas Cruz visited the scene of the carnage in early August, walking through the corridors of the establishment which remained as it was on February 14, 2018.

At the request of prosecutors, this building had never reopened and was kept as it was, with the pools of dried blood, the traces of bullet holes and the things abandoned in an emergency by schoolchildren.

The shooting was the worst school massacre in the United States since the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 26 people died. Since then, a shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May left 21 people dead, including 19 children.

Nikolas Cruz issued an apology in October. “I’m really sorry for what I did, I bear the brunt of it every day,” he said.