FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz showed no lack of mental competence as he planned and carried out his attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a Broward prosecutor said Tuesday.
Assistant State Attorney Mike Satz reviewed the gunman’s actions while cross-examining neurologist Paul Connor, who testified Monday that Cruz lacked the ability to quickly shift the focus of his attention and had trouble solving problems and using his working memory.
Defense lawyers are portraying Cruz as the neurologically damaged victim of his mother’s heavy drinking, part of their bid to persuade jurors to spare him from the death penalty.
But in cross-examination Tuesday, Satz got Connor to concede that many of Cruz’s neurological test scores were in the normal range. Those scores were not discussed during Connor’s direct testimony Monday.
Satz took aim at a graph prepared by Connor headed “Neuropsychological testing of Nikolas Cruz Deficits in nine of 11 domains assessed.” Under questioning from Satz, Connor acknowledged that the chart only contained results of a fraction of the tests he administered and that many of those tests contained average scores, in contrast to the below-average scores highlighted in his chart.
“Did you ask the defendant about the 17 murders committed by the defendant at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018?”
”I did not,” Connor responded.
“You saw how purposeful his actions were?” Satz asked.
”I watched the video,” Connor said. “I was not doing it to interpret it.”
”Did you see how goal-directed it was?” Satz asked. “So you can’t say whether he appeared on the video to be goal-directed and dedicated to his task?“
”I have no opinion on that,” Connor said.
Kenneth Lyons Jones, a pediatrician and one of the first two doctors in the country to identify fetal alcohol syndrome as a medical condition, was brought in Tuesday to testify with even more precision about Cruz’s ailments. He said Cruz does not have the syndrome, which has very specific characteristics, but Cruz does suffer from a related condition called alcohol related neurodevelopmental disorder.
Both fall under what Jones identified as fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. People suffering from ARND tend to be incapable of planning and organizing their thoughts, Jones said during cross examination. “I think that he lost control of himself, without any question,” he said.
But his testimony gave Satz an opening to remind the jury of just how much planning went into the Stoneman Douglas mass shooting.
Satz brought up the series of internet searches Cruz conducted prior to the massacre, again attempting to indicate a capacity for planning that would contradict the experts’ assessment of Cruz’s mental capacity. The searches included information about the mass shootings at Columbine and in Las Vegas and Aurora, Colorado.
Jones said he was unaware of any of those searches.
Jurors will later be asked to weigh the conflicting testimony about Cruz’s mental health issues to determine whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for the 17 murders he committed. The defense is raising fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a possible mitigating factor the jury can consider in choosing a life sentence instead of condemning Cruz to die.
Testimony is scheduled to resume Wednesday morning.
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