Life or death for Parkland shooter? Trial will take months.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Four years, five months, and four days after Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, his trial for the deadliest U.S. mass shooting to reach a jury is set to begin Monday with opening statements.

Delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and legal wrangling, the penalty-only trial is expected to last four months with the seven-man, five-woman jury being exposed to horrific evidence throughout. The jurors will then decide whether Cruz, 23, is sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole.

“Finally,” said Lori Alhadeff, who wants Cruz executed for murdering her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa. “I hope for swift action to hold him responsible.”

All victim parents and family members who have spoken publicly have said, directly or indirectly, that they want Cruz sentenced to death.

The former Stoneman Douglas student pleaded guilty in October to the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre and is only challenging his sentence. Nine other U.S. gunmen who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. Cruz was captured after he fled the school. The suspect in the 2019 killing of 23 people at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz will give his side's presentation. Satz, 80, spent 44 years as Broward County's state attorney and appointed himself lead prosecutor shortly after the shootings that killed 14 students and three staff members. He did not seek a 12th term and left office in early 2021, but his successor, Harold Pryor, kept him on the case.

Craig Trocino, a University of Miami law professor, said Satz would likely emphasize the shooting’s brutality and the story of each victim lost. The prosecution’s theme throughout the trial will be “If any case deserves a death sentence, this is it,” he said.

“They are going to want to talk about how horrible the crime was, how culpable Mr. Cruz is,” said Trocino, who worked on defendants' death penalty appeals before joining the law school.

Cruz’s lead public defender, Melisa McNeill, said in court recently that she had not decided whether her team would give its opening statement immediately after Satz or wait several weeks until it was time to present its case.

Trocino said delaying their opening statement would be a risky and extremely rare defense strategy as it would allow the prosecution to have the only say for half the trial.

He said Cruz’s attorneys would likely want to plant the seed in jurors’ minds that he was a young adult with lifelong emotional and psychological problems. The goal would be to temper the jurors’ emotions as the prosecution presents grisly videos and photos of the shootings and their aftermath, the painful testimony of the surviving wounded, and tearful statements from victims’ family members.

The jurors will also tour the sealed-off three-story classroom building where the massacre occurred. It remains bloodstained and bullet-pocked, with deflated Valentine’s Day balloons and dead flowers strewn about.

“The defense will want to put a human face on Cruz,” Trocino said. “They will want to show why life without the possibility of parole is a sufficient punishment.”