BREAKING: A jury in Florida has unanimously agreed Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz should be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
A former student of the school, Cruz said he chose Valentine’s Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again.
The gunman’s attorneys repeatedly objected that Satz’s case went beyond what was legally allowable or necessary and was aimed primarily at inflaming the jurors’ emotions — objections that were denied by Scherer. Cruz's attorneys never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother's heavy drinking during 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 mother overwhelmed, they said.
The abrupt resting of their case led to a tense exchange between lead attorney Melisa McNeill and Scherer, who called the decision without warning to her or the prosecution"the most uncalled for, unprofessional way to try a case." McNeill countered angrily, “You are insulting me on the record in front of my client," before Scherer told her to stop. Scherer then laid into McNeill, with whom she has had a testy relationship since pretrial hearings began more than three years ago.
In their rebuttal, Satz and his team contended that the gunman did not suffer from fetal alcohol damage but has antisocial personality disorder — in lay terms, he’s a sociopath. Their witnesses said the shooter faked brain damage during testing and that he was capable of controlling his actions, but chose not to. For example, they pointed to his employment as a cashier at a discount store where he never had any disciplinary issues.
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