Parkland shooting trial: prosecutors begin rebuttal, argue shooter aware of actions

The prosecutors are expected to call experts who will testify Cruz has antisocial personality disorder and is fully responsible for the Parkland shooting.

Prosecutors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will begin their rebuttal case Tuesday, challenging his attorneys’ contention that he murdered 17 people because his birth mother abused alcohol during pregnancy, a condition they say went untreated.

Prosecutor Mike Satz’s team is expected to call experts who will testify Cruz has antisocial personality disorder — in lay terms, he’s a sociopath — and fully responsible for his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

According to the National Institutes of Health, people with antisocial personality disorder commit “exploitive, delinquent and criminal behavior with no remorse.” They usually have no regard for others, don’t follow the law, can’t sustain consistent relationships or employment and use manipulation for personal gain, the NIH says.

Prosecutors will want to reemphasize Cruz “understood exactly” what he was doing during the massacre and could “formulate and carry out a plan,” said David S. Weinstein, a Miami defense attorney and former prosecutor.

Robert Jarvis, a professor at Nova Southeastern University’s law school, said prosecution experts will also likely testify that even if Cruz’s brain was damaged by his birth mother’s drinking, that’s true of thousands of other Americans and they don’t commit mass murder.

“If they did, we would be having mass murders on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

Cruz, who turned 24 on Saturday, pleaded guilty last October to murdering 14 Stoneman Douglas students and three staff members. The seven-man, five-woman jury will decide whether he is sentenced to death or life without parole, weighing aggravating factors presented by prosecutors against the defense’s mitigating circumstances. A juror could also vote for life out of mercy for Cruz. For the former Stoneman Douglas student to receive a death sentence, the jury must unanimously agree.

Satz’s team told Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer their presentation could take two weeks, but Jarvis and Weinstein question whether that’s too much for a jury that began hearing evidence in July.