Attorneys argue over school shooter’s fate: death or prison

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The prosecutor and defense attorney for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz agreed Tuesday that his 2018 attack that killed 17 people was horrible, but disagreed in their closing arguments on whether it was an act of evil worthy of execution or one of a broken person who should be imprisoned for life. The killings, he said, “were unrelentlessly heinous, atrocious and cruel.” McNeill said neither Cruz nor herself has ever denied what he did and that “he knew right from wrong and he chose wrong.” But she said the former Stoneman Douglas student is “a broken, brain-damaged, mentally ill young man,” doomed from conception by the heavy drinking and drug use of his birth mother during pregnancy. He then noted a YouTube comment, which jurors saw during the trial, in which Cruz said: “I don’t mind shooting a girl in the chest.” “That’s exactly what he did,” Satz said. His voice breaking, Satz concluded his two-hour presentation by reciting the victims’ names, then saying that for their murders “the appropriate sentence for Nikolas Cruz is the death penalty.” McNeill during her presentation acknowledged the horror Cruz inflicted and said jurors have every right to be angry, “but how many times have we made decisions based solely on anger and regretted it?” She focused on her belief that heavy drinking by his birth mother, Brenda Woodard, during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Gesturing toward the victims’ families, she said, “There is no punishment you could ever give Nikolas Cruz that would ever make him suffer as much as those people have and as much as they will continue to suffer every single day.” “Sentencing Nikolas to death will not change that.