The Legal Landscape of FASD

This chapter describes how the defense team in the Parkland school shooter case used a whole-cloth approach to evaluate and present the life of defendant Nikolas Cruz, thereby equipping jurors selected via the Morgan Method to consider and give meaningful effect to the central relevance of his mitigation, namely, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). The whole-cloth approach incorporated all data known about Cruz from conception on to reveal that what had been missed and/or misdiagnosed by practitioners throughout his life actually was FASD—a severe neurodevelopmental condition that had inexorably touched every aspect of his functioning. The defense team used that understanding to press the case for Cruz’s diminished culpability and thus convinced three jurors to spare him from the death penalty. We conclude our analysis by briefly addressing reasons that criminal courts and factfinders often dismiss or minimize FASD evidence, the salience of severe brain damage and its developmental sequelae without regard to diagnostic category, and potential avenues for expanding compassionate sentencing.