Defense In School Shooter's Trial Set To Present Its Case
Newsy
Attorneys for Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will present their case for why they believe he should be sentenced to life in prison and not death.
The prosecution spent three weeks telling jurors how Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at a Florida high school four years ago. Now his attorneys will get their chance to present why they believe he did it, hoping to get him sentenced to life without parole instead of death.
Melisa McNeill, Cruz's lead public defender, is expected to give her opening statement Monday, having deferred its presentation from the start of the trial a month ago.
She and her team will then begin laying out their 23-year-old client's life history: his birth mother's abuse of alcohol and cocaine during her pregnancy, leading to possible fetal alcohol syndrome; his severe mental and emotional problems; his alleged sexual abuse by a "trusted peer;" the bullying he endured; and his adoptive father's death when he was 5 and his adoptive mother's four months before his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
