The trial of Nikolas Cruz, the admitted shooter in the 2018 school massacre in Parkland, Florida, begins Monday — and jurors will decide whether he will instead be sentenced to death or rot in prison.
A 12-member jury in Fort Lauderdale will not decide whether Cruz is guilty in the case, since the mass shooter in October admitted to killing 17 people at his former school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS, on Feb. 14, 2018.
Instead, the jury, which took nearly three months to select, will debate whether Cruz should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. Only one juror would have to oppose the death penalty for Cruz to receive the lesser sentence of life behind bars.
A jury will decide whether Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz will receive the death penalty or life in prison.AP
Cruz, 23, had previously made offers to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, but prosecutors rejected the proposed deals.
The case was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, prosecutors’ request for more time to interview mental health experts expected to testify on Cruz’s behalf — and because of a painstaking jury selection process that whittled down the pool of 1,000- man pool.
Cruz pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, but prosecutors continued to reject the deal.EPA
One protected juror told the judge she had no time for civil duty because she was married and entertaining a “sugar daddy”.
The jury was finalized late last month with seven men and five women selected, plus 10 alternates.
Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer earlier this month rejected a request by Cruz’s defense team to further delay the trial because of a national “wave of emotion” following the shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, which lawyers argued can influence the jury and deprive their client of a fair trial, Fox News reported.
Cruz, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder for fatally shooting 14 students and three staff members with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
Cruz’s trial comes just weeks after two of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. Cruz’s defense team plans to argue that he is mentally ill and intellectually disabled. AP
He also pleaded guilty to 17 counts of attempted assault, one for each of the people injured in the massacre.
In a separate case, he also handled the assault of a Broward County jail guard nine months after the mass shooting.
“I’m very sorry for what I did and I have to live with that every day,” Cruz said during his hearing.
His defense is expected to argue that he is mentally ill and intellectually disabled.
Jury selection in Cruz’s trial took three months to complete.AP
Prosecutors have asked a judge to admit numerous pieces of evidence during the trial, including Cruz’s racist and homophobic online posts and his online searches for child pornography and animal cruelty.
They argue that this evidence proves that while Cruz may suffer from behavioral disorders, he was not mentally incompetent or intellectually impaired when he committed the murders.
The death penalty trial — which is expected to last four to six months — comes after some of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, including the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two adults and May 14 Buffalo supermarket shooting leaves 10 dead.
The Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, Illinois — where six people were killed and dozens injured — marked the 309th mass shooting of 2022 in the United States.
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