FORT LAUDERDALE — As the case versus convicted mass murder Nikolas Cruz draws to a shut, it was a complicated day for lots of in the court docket Tuesday as the two sides delivered their closing arguments.
“The testimony unveiled the unspeakable, horrific brutality,” claimed prosecutor Michael Satz.
Folks who dropped their loved ones for the duration of the Valentine’s Working day 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Substantial Faculty in Parkland hugged each and every other for help throughout the proceeding.
“It truly is been reported (that) what a person writes and what a person says is a window to someone’s soul,” reported Satz, who is trying to find the dying penalty, reported whilst urging jurors to closely enjoy the videos made by the shooter before the massacre that still left above a dozen men and women useless. “What he was accomplishing, he was hunting his victims. That’s what he desired to do.”
Satz showed jurors the massacre that was captured on surveillance video and that in depth just about every of the 17 murders, expressing he designed a program and adopted as a result of.
The video prompted Lori Alhadeff to depart the courtroom in tears, when a person else in the courtroom shook his head in grief.
“It was calculated, it was purposeful and it was a systematic massacre,” Satz mentioned.
But lawyers for Cruz sought to sway jurors to hand down a existence sentence.
“The state of Florida needs to set you in a area of dislike and anger and vengeance,” reported direct defense lawyer Melisa McNeil. “If that is the place you’re at you are extra probably to sentence that younger gentleman to death.”
She said no just one is denying Cruz did awful factors, but the defense argued that he was destroyed from the beginning by using his birth mom Brenda’s abuse of prescription drugs and alcohol.
“You now know that Nikolas is a brain harmed, broken, mentally ill individual, by means of no fault of possess,” McNeil explained. “He was basically poisoned in Brenda’s womb.”
Cruz’s lawyer urged the jury to take into consideration lifestyle in jail, inquiring for mercy, pointing out they can under no circumstances take again their decision.
“So I now place his daily life in your hands,” McNeill claimed.
