MIAMI, Oct 10, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Nikolas Cruz, the man who shot and killed 17

people at a Florida high school in 2018, will learn his fate in the next few
days, when a jury decides between life in prison and execution.

Cruz has pleaded guilty to the massacre, so all that remains after nearly
three months of often disturbing testimony is for the jury to decide on his
punishment.

It has been a gut-wrenching experience for relatives of those gunned down at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a town north of Miami.

Lawyers defending Cruz, who is now 24, will present their final arguments on
Tuesday. Jury deliberations begin the following day.

If the jury of seven men and five women does not vote unanimously for capital
punishment, Cruz will be sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of
parole.

On February 14, 2018, the then 19-year-old Cruz walked into the school
carrying a high-powered AR-15 rifle. He had been expelled from the school a
year earlier for disciplinary reasons.

In a matter of nine minutes, he killed 14 students and three school
employees, then fled by mixing in with people frantically escaping the gory
scene.

Police arrested Cruz shortly thereafter as he walked along the street.

- Cold-blooded killer or troubled kid? -

The next few days in the Fort Lauderdale courtroom will show whether the
prosecution, led by Michael Satz, or the defense, under Melisa McNeill, has
laid out a more persuasive case.

McNeill, a public defender, centered her strategy on Cruz's traumatic
childhood. She argued that he was born with fetal alcohol stress disorder
because his mother, who was homeless, drank heavily while pregnant with him.
She also used drugs.

"He was poisoned in the womb," McNeill told the court back in August. "His
brain was irretrievably broken, through no fault of his own."

Cruz's birth mother gave him up in a brokered private adoption, McNeill said,
but his adoptive mother also became an alcoholic, and he grew up in a broken
home.

Cruz told the court that a family friend abused him sexually at age nine, and
McNeill said his developmental and behavioral problems were never properly
addressed.

Given the challenges he faced, she said, life in prison was a more
appropriate punishment than execution.

Prosecutors, however, argued that Cruz knew exactly what he was doing when he
walked into the school with a semi-automatic rifle and several ammunition
clips.

Satz has said Cruz carried out a "cold, calculated, manipulative and deadly"
act -- one he had announced in a video taped three days earlier.

Satz played a video of the shooting recorded by another student. Screams,
cries and moans were punctuated by multiple shots as terrified students
sought cover from bullets blasting through the classroom door.

Several anguished relatives of the victims fled the courtroom as the video
was played, while others wept openly and hugged their loved ones.

Satz called former students who had witnessed the shooting to testify, and
organized a trip for the jury to visit the school.

The prosecutor tried to discredit the idea that Cruz suffered from fetal
alcohol syndrome. He elicited testimony from a neuropsychologist, Robert
Denney, who accused Cruz of faking brain problems by intentionally doing
poorly on psychological tests.

Denney argued that the very fact that Cruz acted with premeditation showed
that he understands reality and can control his actions.

- Gun control -

The shooting stunned the nation and reignited debate on gun control, since
Cruz had legally purchased the gun he used, despite his history of mental
issues.

On March 24, 2018, nationwide marches inspired by school shooting survivors
and parents of victims brought together 1.5 million people -- the largest
public turnout ever in defense of stricter gun control laws in America.

But the Parkland shooting prompted no significant reform and gun sales have
continued to rise.

There have been more mass shootings, including one in Uvalde, Texas, in May
that left 19 young children and two adults dead at an elementary school.

After the latest shootings, Congress did pass legislation to increase funding
for school security and mental health care.