Closing arguments begin in sentencing hearing of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz

Closing arguments kicked off Tuesday morning in the sentencing trial of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz, who will either be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors pushing for the death penalty have spent the months-long trial outlining how Cruz planned every detail of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, including the date. Just 19 at the time, Cruz burst into the Parkland school on Feb. 14, 2018, and immediately started “hunting his victims,” lead prosecutor Mike Satz said.

He chose Valentine’s Day, he said, so students at the school would never want to celebrate the holiday again.

Cruz’s actions were “tactical and purposeful” as he stalked through three-story classroom building, Satz said, shooting some victims at “close range” and returning to some wounded victims “to finish them off.” He was armed at the time with an AR-15-style automatic rifle.

Three school staff members and 14 students were slaughtered amid the seven minutes of violence. Satz called the killings “unrelentlessly heinous, atrocious and cruel.”

Cruz’s internet activity — specifically comments about his desire to carry out a mass shooting as well as searches he made for information about how to go about doing it — should also be noteworthy, prosecutors argued.

“What one writes, what one says, is a window to someone’s soul,” he told the panel of jurors, made up of seven men and five women.

Some of his Google searches included more generic terms, like “murder” or “shooting people.” Others sought specific information about mass shootings and those who carried them out in the past. He also searched for a map of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, where he was once a student.

The trial’s imminent conclusion comes nearly a year after Cruz, now 21, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts attempted murder for the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Because he has already confessed, jurors have been tasked only with determining whether Cruz will be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Should they select the death penalty, their decision must be unanimous.

Cruz’s defense attorneys, who have been battling to save his life, never attempted to deny the atrocities he committed, but instead focused on his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy. Lead attorney Melisa McNeill said fetal alcohol syndrome could account for his troubling and sometimes violent behavior patterns, which first started to emerge when he was 2 years old.

Cruz was misdiagnosed as a child with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, McNeill argued, and he was therefore never given the appropriate treatment.

Satz and his team rejected the notion, instead labeling Cruz a sociopath with symptoms more akin to anti-social personality disorder. They have noted seven aggravating factors, including that the killings were especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, as well as cold, calculated and premeditated, which should “outweigh any mitigation about anything about the defendant’s background or character,” Satz said.

Other aggravating factors include the fact he knowingly created a great risk of death to many people and that he disrupted a lawful government function.

The defense prematurely wrapped their arguments last month, prompting the judge to blast them as unprofessional. Defense attorneys went on to file a motion to disqualify the judge for her comments, arguing they were indicative of the judge’s bias against Cruz. It was ultimately denied.

Cruz’s defense attorneys are set to being their closing statements later Tuesday afternoon.

With News Wire Services