The attorney for the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school shooter asked the jury Monday to rule in favor of life in prison instead of the death penalty, arguing her client was mentally ill.
Melisa McNeill notably highlighted the difficult childhood of Nikolas Cruz, who on February 14, 2018, killed 17 people in Parkland, a small town north of Miami, by opening fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Marjory Stoneman High School. he had been expelled a year earlier.
The shooting “is not the beginning of the story”
The 23-year-old, who pleaded guilty to the murders in October, was born to a “homeless and mentally challenged” alcoholic and drug-addicted mother, according to the lawyer. His trial now centers on whether he deserves the death penalty, as prosecutors are asking. If only one member of the jury objects, Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced to an incomprehensible life sentence.
According to Melisa McNeill, the fact that Nikolas Cruz was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, was later diagnosed at age 3 with antisocial personality disorder, and grew up in a broken, abusive home with a depressed, alcoholic foster mother, should lead to a reduction in her sentence and make her lean towards life imprisonment instead of 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 beginning of the Nikolas Cruz story,” he said.
He didn’t get the help he needed, even though his teachers knew he was a danger to himself and others, Melisa McNeill pleaded.
Nicholas Cruz apologized.
After his exclusion from high school, Nikolas Cruz “did not stop having mental problems. He was not without an emotional disability, a language impairment, and a need for help. But (that help) is gone,” he added. The twelve regulars and ten alternates who make up the jury in Nikolas Cruz’s trial visited the butcher shop at the beginning of August, walking through the corridors of the establishment that remained as it was on February 14, 2018.
At the request of prosecutors, this building had never reopened and remained as it was, complete with puddles of dried blood, traces of bullet holes, and urgently abandoned cases by high school students.
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 were killed. Since then, a shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May has left 21 dead, including 19 children. Nikolas Cruz issued an apology in October. “I’m so sorry for what I did, I bear the brunt of it every day,” he said.
Source: BFM TV
