Salad Days
“I am very sorry for what I did, and I have to live with it every day, and if I were to get a second chance I would do everything in my power to try to help others […] I’m trying my best to maintain my composure, and I just want you to know I’m really sorry, and I hope you give me a chance to try to help others. I believe it’s your decision to decide where I go, whether I live or die, not the jury’s; I believe it’s your decision. I’m sorry.”
These are some of the only words I have heard Nikolas Cruz (now age 24) utter, other than his stifling plan of action video discussing his objective of shooting several students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas School on February 14th 2018. I imagine these words, quoted, were somewhat shaped by his defence lawyers, though I cannot help but pay attention to his regret, cognisance, and yet some distance, too. I empathise with him, and I write this to those who also empathise with him, who hesitate to mark him as a monster nor mark me as one for my opinion. Though I wonder why I feel this empathy, and wonder what it would take for my stance to change. I must make clear here that I recognise and condemn his actions — as does the law — but I am sure that a personal connection to this case would force me to look at this with a new insight. And I must also clarify here that his actions are unforgivable; there’s no arguing with this.
One of my dearest friends, Yuval, went to middle school with “Nik” Cruz, she calls him, and attended the adjacent high school to Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Florida. She knew victims of the attack, one of whom she even recalls having a crush on her. She tells me stories of Cruz’ strange and timid behaviour. She recently told me he receives fan mail for his crime; this intimate detail made me feel slightly nauseous. I sat with her shortly before this year’s anniversary of the shooting; she seemed gloomy and disappointed, and this was months before I had researched the case myself. It seems that because some time elapsed between these events, I leaned into my obsession with this case without emotional attachment, much like how other public court cases have piqued my interest in recent years, such as the Michael Jackson paedophilia case and the Johnny Depp / Amber Heard saga. Similarly in the Jackson and Heard narratives I empathised, at least at times, with the perceived perpetrator, considering their loneliness, however delusional they were, or rather sane they considered themselves.
Beginning to watch Cruz’ death row trial a few months ago, I first listened to the accounts of the survivors, relatives and witnesses, and in particular remember a death glare towards Cruz from an older sister, a weeping young girl remembering her boyfriend, and several parents still too overwhelmed to recount their memories. I, of course, empathise with them too — strongly, but I still can’t help but look at Cruz in the footage and wonder how he’s feeling; is he sitting there cold, is he trying to dissociate, or is he listening and processing the stories of those he affected? And weeks later, the defence lawyers brought to the stand family and acquaintances in Cruz’ life whom he knew to help tell his story.
The fact that the death penalty exists at all is a bewildering concept to me. It is certainly jarring to engage with this case and remind myself that the prosecution are arguing for Cruz to die, and the defence to live. There seems to be a somewhat circular argument relevant in this case regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment. This form of condemnation begs the question: in what circumstances does one believe somebody deserves to die before their time. However, the slightly distributing fact of the matter is that Cruz himself ended seventeen lives before their time. And so, if in the case that somebody is found guilty of murder and we then deem this worthy of capital punishment, why do we take them to court at all — for professionalism? To illustrate the painful details? If his actions cannot be justified, then I wonder why we make space for background information at all. Inside the courtroom, there seems to be an element of separating the crime from the human, or at least isolating the incident. I say this despite finding Cruz’ story fascinating and moreover appreciate the process of unpacking the criminal’s life. But then I find myself contemplating the jury’s intake of knowledge, appreciating factors that led to the crime itself, but also connecting their emotional soul to the real, vulnerable human (at least partly) that is Nikolas Cruz.
Perhaps I more closely relate to and admire the defence lawyers’ courage rather than Cruz’ sorrow; I’d consider these lawyers somewhat angelic in devoting their work to view their clients in a merciful light. The American Bar Association states their job is to “advocate with courage and devotion” and I’d argue that this is a loving way to treat a human. Witnesses brought to the stand by the defence reveal details about Cruz’ upbringing to colour his views of the world which subsequently led to said tragedy. Recovered interview documentation reveals that as he loaded and began to shoot his firearm, he was listening to the song “Salad Days” by Mac DeMarco, beginning with, “As I’m getting’ older, chip up on my shoulder, rollin’ through life, you roll over and die, la-li-la-lala”. Though I don’t have much of a personal connection to this song, it currently has over 126,000 streams on Spotify, and I wonder how those who do enjoy the song reckon with their commonality with a murderer.
I wonder if I have the capacity to royally fuck up that badly… I have slithered my way through recent years with an air of recklessness about me and oftentimes questioned if I am too bothered by consequences. In the recent prosecution’s rebuttal, they have determined that Cruz’ apparent psychiatric symptoms were supposedly faked, and rather he obtains an antisocial personality disorder, with evidence suggesting that throughout his life he has been able to control his behaviour according to his mood, but that his sense of right and wrong has been skewed, or even numbed. At times I can recall acting with a degree of arrogance and dismissal of my actions and the response of others, and perhaps I — scarily — therefore relate to Cruz’ blind egotism in a strange, perverted way. G-d, I don’t want to believe I could ever plan a murder myself, however it is still unclear to me to what extent that I fuck up I would want my story to be told.
I owe myself, and you, reader, some distance from Nikolas Cruz; I experienced a privileged upbringing, a functional, loving family in a spacious home, with my health, education, and cultural exposure prioritised throughout my upbringing. Perhaps it is worth mentioning, too, that as the youngest of three and only girl, I indeed had the cotton wool pulled over my eyes for as long as possible, meaning my rebellious phase has been one of discovery, carelessness, one-upmanship and loneliness, at times. I can hear my best friend Natasha laughing at the following idea, but I am curious too if my own reckoning with G-d in later years has affected this behaviour pouring out of me. I was certainly a cheeky child, with a deep sadness and empathy likely inherited from my maternal ancestors, and was not afraid to speak my mind in my outbursts of sass. I grew up with strong-minded parents, arguably tough characters, and I could see how the combination of all these factors might generate a product of unknowingly neutral chaos.
And I do, indeed, have a close personal connection to a criminal in my bloodline. Though this wasn’t quite a case first degree murder, I have had conversations with this family member since this story was revealed to me in my late teens, and conversations too with those the case more personally affected. What I gained from listening to this story was having to grapple with my undeniable and unchanging link to this person, empathising with the leniency of decisions at key moments before the arrest and moreover loving this person despite all this. I do not love Nikolas Cruz, but I do not firmly believe that he ought to die. The closest I can bring myself to admitting such sentiment is that perhaps this circumstance is worthy of being treated with critical consequences. And perhaps it is less so that I don’t believe in capital punishment, and more so that the deliberation of sentencing somebody to death in a painsteakingly long process is what absolutely freaks me, given I find the concept of death terrifying enough.
Revisiting the images in my mind of Cruz hitting his head, resting his face in his palms, and miming shooting himself in the mouth in the interrogation tapes disturbs me as I write this. To think that he has sat through years of discussion of this gruelling subject, dissociating and waiting patiently, and growing older all the while, I am continuously struck by my helpless fascination with Cruz. And given the recent developments of said case since beginning to draft this paper, including the defence prematurely resting their case, my feelings specifically about this tragedy persist to confuse me and ache my heart. I wish to live in a world where these conversations weren’t necessary and encourage you, reader, to find ways to empathise with those society chooses, so harshly and fast, to irredeemably judge.
