Florida high school shooter’s penalty trial set to begin

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The penalty trial of Florida faculty shooter Nikolas Cruz begins Monday with the jury listening to opening statements after which the primary proof concerning the 2018 bloodbath that left 14 college students and three workers members lifeless at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty.

The seven-man, five-woman panel, backed up by 10 alternates, will hear from lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who is predicted to focus on Cruz’s brutality as he stalked a three-story classroom constructing, firing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle down hallways and into school rooms. Cruz typically walked again to wounded victims and killed them with a second volley of photographs.

Cruz, 23, pleaded responsible in October to 17 counts of first-degree homicide; the one factor he’s contesting is the demise penalty sentence that prosecutors are searching for. The jurors can solely sentence him to demise or life with out the opportunity of parole for the Feb. 14, 2018, shootings. The trial for the previous Stoneman Douglas pupil, anticipated to final about 4 months, was supposed to start in 2020, however the COVID-19 pandemic and authorized fights delayed it.

The protection attorneys gained’t say when they are going to ship their opening statements: firstly of the trial or after they start presenting their case weeks from now. The latter technique can be uncommon and dangerous as a result of it could give the prosecution the one say earlier than jurors look at grisly proof and listen to heartrending testimony from taking pictures survivors and the victims’ dad and mom and spouses.

If lead defender Melisa McNeill provides her assertion, she is going to seemingly emphasize that Cruz is a younger grownup with lifelong emotional and psychological issues who allegedly suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome and abuse. The aim can be to mood the jurors’ feelings as they hear the prosecution’s case, making them extra open to contemplating the protection’s arguments later.

The Parkland taking pictures is the deadliest to achieve trial in U.S. historical past. 9 different gunmen who killed not less than 17 individuals died throughout or instantly after their shootings, both by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect within the 2019 slaying of 23 individuals at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

After openings, that are restricted to 90 minutes every, the prosecutors’ first witness will likely be referred to as. They haven’t mentioned who that will likely be.

When the jury finally will get the case this fall, it’s going to vote 17 occasions on the query of whether or not to suggest the demise penalty: as soon as for every of the victims.

Each vote have to be unanimous; a nonunanimous vote for any one of many victims means Cruz’s sentence for that individual can be life in jail. The jurors are advised that to vote for the demise penalty, the annoying circumstances the prosecution has offered for the sufferer in query should, of their judgment, “outweigh” mitigating components offered by the protection.

Whatever the proof, any juror can vote for all times in jail out of mercy. Throughout jury choice, the panelists mentioned beneath oath that they’re able to voting for both sentence.