The hardest case for mercy; Inside the effort to spare the Parkland school shooter

By Joe Sexton
The Marshalll Project
In the summer of 1998, Brenda Woodard and Carolyn Deakins were two of the dozens of women selling sex on the streets of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was a desperate scene down by the 17th Street Causeway, the first bridge into the city from its south. The johns, many of them fresh arrivals from the nearby airport, would swing off U.S. 1, and conduct their business in cars along Miami Road…