School shooter trial to hear case rebuttal

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — 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.”

Cruz, 24, 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.

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.

Jurors may be eager to deliberate, so Satz should keep the rebuttal case focused and to the point, they said.

Satz focused on Cruz’s eight months of planning, the seven minutes he stalked the halls of a three-story classroom building, firing 140 shots with a semiautomatic rifle and his escape.

He played security videos of the shooting and showed crime scene and autopsy photos. Teachers and students testified about watching others die.

Satz took the jury to the fenced-off building, which remains blood-stained and bullet-pocked. Parents and spouses gave tearful and angry statements about their loss.

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. The defense cut their case short, calling only about 25 of the 80 witnesses they said would testify.

That will limit what the prosecution can raise in rebuttal — any evidence or testimony must have some tie to what the defense presented.