Nikolas Cruz trial: Jurors to get case Wednesday

On February 14, 2018, then 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.  

Cruz was responsible for the death of 17 students and staff members. 

Here is a closer look at the Nikols Cruz trial through the years. 

PARKLAND - On Feb. 14, 2018, a then 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz busted onto the campus of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and before he was gone he would leave 17 students and faculty members dead in his wake.

The events that unfolded that day would end up being the deadliest high school shooting in modern U.S. history.

The timeline is still unfolding with jurors set to decide, starting Wednesday, if Cruz should be sentenced to death or receive a life sentence in prison. 

Court has ended for the day and jurors are set to return Wednesday morning at 8:30 a.m.

Judge Elizabeth Scherer told the jurors that she will provide instructions to them Wednesday morning, which will allow them to start their deliberations after that charge.

Before releasing the jurors for the day, the judge said jurors should not review information about the case while they are outside the presence of the court.

She also said the jury should pack as if they are going on a trip and bring toiletries and a change of clothes. She also said the jurors should disable location tracking on their phones when they go home tonight before reporting to the court house Wednesday.

She said she was not sure when the deliberations would end.

FORT LAUDERDALE - The lead prosecutor of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz made his final push Tuesday to persuade jurors to sentence him to death, telling them during his closing argument that the 2018 attack that killed 17 people was cold, calculated and meticulously planned and deserving of execution.

Mike Satz said Cruz "was hunting his victims" as he stalked a three-story classroom building at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for seven minutes, firing into some victims at close range and returning to some wounded victims as they lay helpless "to finish them off."

He pointed to Cruz's internet writings and videos, where he talked about his murderous desires such as when he wrote, "No mercy, no questions, double tap. I am going to kill a ... ton of people and children."

"It is said that what one writes and says is a window into their soul," Satz said as the three-month trial neared its conclusion. The killings, he said, "were unrelentlessly heinous, atrocious and cruel."

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine's Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again.

Cruz, dressed in an off-white sweater, sat impassively during Satz's presentation, occasionally exchanging notes with his attorneys. His lead attorney, Melisa McNeill, will give her closing argument later Tuesday. Deliberations are expected to start Wednesday.

A large number of the victims' parents, wives and family members packed the section of the courtroom reserved for them, watching Satz intently, many of them weeping. Just minutes earlier, they had greeted each other with smiles, handshakes and hugs.

The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

Satz kept his main case simple for the seven-man, five-woman jury. He focused on Cruz's eight months of planning and the attack, where Cruz fired 140 shots with an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, and his escape.

He played security videos of the shooting and showed gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos. Teachers and students testified about watching others die. He took the jury to the fenced-off building, which remains blood-stained and bullet-pocked. Parents and spouses gave tearful and angry statements.

McNeill and her team 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 defense cut their case short, calling only about 25 of the 80 witnesses they said would testify. They never brought up Cruz's high school years or called his younger half-brother, Zachary, whom they accused of bullying.

In rebuttal, Satz and his team contended that Cruz did not suffer from fetal alcohol damage but has antisocial personality disorder - in lay terms, he's a sociopath. Their witnesses said Cruz 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.

Prosecutors also played numerous video recordings of Cruz discussing the crime with their mental health experts where he talked about his planning and motivation.

The defense used their cross-examination during the rebuttal case to allege Cruz was sexually molested and raped by a 12-year-old neighbor when he was 9.

Prosecutors have tried to prove that the shooting was a cold and carefully planned massacre by someone suffering from an anti-social personality disorder.

But the defense attorneys contend that the alcoholism that Cruz's birth mother's battle led to the violence.

"The public defenders are trying to keep on swaying this back to this poor child that was damaged from even before birth and he suffered all these problems all along," said defense attorney Richard Rosenbaum, who is not part of this proceeding.

Jury deliberations will get underway on Wednesday. They have no time limit to decide whether to recommend Cruz be put to death or sentenced to life in prison. To recommend the death penalty, jurors have to be unanimous on all 17 counts.

Although the trial is to decide Cruz's punishment and nothing else, relatives of the victims said they are glad the court hearing is reaching its conclusion.

"My frame of mind is I'm glad we are near an end," said Debbi Hixon, whose husband, athletic director Chris Hixon, was killed during the mass shooting.

Hixon told CBS4 Monday that regardless of the court outcome, it will change nothing about her reality, which is life without her husband.

"Having a death sentence will bring some justice and send a message this is intolerable," she said.