PONTIAC, MI -- Deputies escorted the teen killer into the courtroom. He wore an orange jail uniform and dark-rimmed glasses. Shackled and handcuffed, his face showed no emotion.

“He took pleasure in his appetite for darkness,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald told the courtroom and began listing off the victims. “He only stopped because there was no one left to shoot.”

McDonald said she’ll never forget showing surveillance video of the shooting to the victims’ parents. In one instance, a mother watched as her 17-year-old daughter, cowering “in a ball,” was shot “at point-blank range.”

Attorneys on Friday, Aug. 18, finished presenting their cases and gave closing statements during a pre-sentencing hearing for convicted Oxford High shooter Ethan Crumbley.

Oakland County Circuit Judge Kwame L. Rowe will now determine if the 17-year-old is “irreparably corrupt” and should spend the remainder of his life in prison.

The teen pleaded guilty to 24 felonies in October, including first-degree murder, for the Nov. 30, 2021 Oxford High School shooting that left Hana St. Juliana, 14, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Tate Myre, 16 and Justin Shilling, 17, dead and seven others injured, including a teacher.

The Supreme Court mandates juvenile murderers be given special hearing, named a Miller hearing, that considers their youth and lack of development before they can be given a life sentence without a chance of parole.

Rowe is expected to announce his ruling during a hearing set for Sept. 29 at 9 a.m., followed by a sentencing that will include victim statements on Dec. 8 at 9 a.m.

Related: ‘It was crushing.’ Assistant principal recounts trying to save dying Michigan school shooting victim

The Miller hearing lasted four days and included emotional testimony from an assistant principal who encountered the killer in the hallway after he fatally shot 16-year-old junior, a student who witnessed his classmate’s execution in the boys’ bathroom, police who responded to the scene and various doctors who reviewed Crumbley’s behavior and mental health.

Related: Michigan school shooting survivors testify. ‘I realized if I stayed I was going to die’

The defense case focused on claims that Crumbley suffered from untreated mental illness, and his parents and school staff were negligent in failing to intervene or respond to violent warning signs, including disturbing drawings and phrases written on a math assignment the morning of the shooting.

Defense attorney Paulette Loftin read passages from Crumbley’s journal aloud during closing statements.

“I feel like I’m in a time loop of sadness,” Crumbley wrote in his journal. “I will forever not feel the love of another human being.”

Loftin argued the teen’s parents repeatedly ignored his pleas for help and clear warning signs that he was in trouble.

“Ethan had quit the bowling team, he had quit his job, he was failing almost every single subject, he sat alone at lunch, his only trusted friend left, his dog died,” Loftin said. “He was hallucinating, he was hearing voices, he was depressed, he was suicidal, he was anxious, he was writing on a paper in the middle of class, surrounded by his peers, ‘The thoughts won’t stop. The world is dead. My life is useless.’”

But McDonald said that blaming somebody else for not stopping a school shooter is for a different hearing.

“He is guilty, pled guilty and should spend the rest of his life in prison,” she added.

Prosecutors presented social media posts, violent and sadistic journal entries, text messages and a manifesto video recorded on the eve of the shooting to argue Crumbley was deeply troubled, premeditated the shooting and expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.

“I can’t take it anymore, I am broke,” the teen said in the manifesto recording. “I fought it for years, lying to myself over and over again, but it’s taught me the truth.

“There’s no voices in my head. The voices are me ... I am the demon.”

Related: Oxford High killer wanted to shoot ‘pretty’ girls in back of their heads, his journal said

In his journal entries, the teen expressed his admiration for previous school shooters and outlined his plan.

“The first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer just like me,” he wrote in the 22-page journal discovered on the floor of the boys’ bathroom following the shooting. “I hope that every parent of kids I gratefully murdered will be so sad that they kill themselves, and I want all of America to see the darkness in me.”

In her closing statements, the prosecutor discussed a video of the shooter torturing baby birds. The judge deemed it too disturbing to show in open court.

“The most disturbing part about it, shockingly, isn’t the mutilation and torture of these tiny, tiny little living things, and drills going through their stomachs and burning wings, the most disturbing part about it was the defendant’s voice as he was doing it ... He exhibited pleasure from it.”

McDonald argued that that there is no redemption left for Crumbley.

“This is a person who killed four of his classmates, solely for the pleasure of killing and to increase the body count to try and make himself famous” she said. “He wanted to kill people who had their whole life in front of them.”

Life without parole is a “just and proportional sentence,” the prosecutor said.

“His life will be spared, just the way he wanted,” she said. “He will continue to watch his victims suffer, but he can do it from a place where the victims will not have to live in fear that they will face him again.”

More on MLive:

‘It was crushing.’ Assistant principal recounts trying to save dying Michigan school shooting victim

Michigan school shooting survivors testify. ‘I realized if I stayed I was going to die’

Haunting words of Michigan school shooter: ‘I am the demon’

Oxford High killer wanted to shoot ‘pretty’ girls in back of their heads, his journal said

Rushing past victims is the ‘most difficult thing,’ detective says at hearing for Michigan school shooter