A neuropsychologist called to testify by the young man’s lawyers Nicholas Cruzthe confessed author of the massacre of 17 people in a high school in Parkland (Florida, USA) in February 2018, pointed out on Monday that the biological mother’s use of alcohol and cocaine during pregnancy caused damage to the fetus.
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Neuropsychologist Paul Connor testified at a hearing that, based on medical records and witness testimony, Brenda Woodart, Cruz’s biological mother, now 23, drank and used cocaine for much of her pregnancy before Cruz’s birth in 1998..
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Woodard, who died in 2021 and practiced prostitution in the city of Fort Lauderdale, north of Miami, gave the baby up for adoption at birth to his adoptive parents, Lynda and Roger Cruz.
In a telematic appearance, Connor told the jury that people with “fetal alcohol spectrum disorder” show, at an early age, motor, behavioral (impulse control), and cognitive abnormalitiesproblems that previous defense testimony claimed Cruz had.
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The public defender Melisa McNeill, who leads Cruz’s defense, based her arguments since she began her shift based on Cruz’s history, who at the age of three had her first appointment with a psychiatrist after discovering that she had learning difficulties and years then, during middle school, he began to develop a fixation on firearms.
McNeill had already gone back in other hearings to Cruz’s biological mother, a homeless drug addict who failed to stop heavy substance use despite her pregnancy, as evidenced by possession and purchase arrest records. of cocaine during 1998.
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Sustained consumption of alcohol and drugs by the mother “poisoned” the developing brain of the author of the massacreas the lawyer said in August, something that triggered fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.
Several preschool teachers testified that Cruz, as a child, had difficulty using utensils and running without falling. He was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and teachers testified that he was an extremely anxious boy and had trouble making friends.
McNeill recalled in the process presided over by Judge Elizabeth Scherer that the specialists and social workers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the massacre took place, warned of the young man’s emotional problems and his persistent fixation with weapons, when he was already student of this school of more than 3,300 students.
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The goal of Cruz’s defense is to convince at least one of the 12 jurors that your client is sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, instead of the death penalty, as the Prosecutor’s Office seeks. For capital punishment, the 12 votes of the jury are needed.
EFE
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