The jurors who will decide whether Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole have begun their deliberations.
Cruz’s lead attorney Melisa McNeill and her team never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother’sduring pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Their experts said his bizarre, troubling and sometimes violent behavior starting at age 2 was misdiagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, meaning he never got the proper treatment. That left his widowed adoptive motherThe jurors will be voting 17 times — once for each victim.
They then must determine whether the aggravating circumstances “outweigh” the mitigating factors that the defense argued such as his birth mother's drinking, his adoptive mother's alleged failure to get him proper psychiatric care and his admission of guilt. A death sentence recommendation requires a unanimous vote on at least one victim. If one or more jurors vote for life on all victims, that will be his sentence.Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will schedule a sentencing hearing, likely months from now. Cruz's attorneys will have an opportunity to persuade her to override the jury and impose a life sentence, but that rarely succeeds. If sentenced to death, he will be sent to Florida's Death Row while his case goes through appeals.
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