Nikolas Cruz, the Florida school shooter who killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland on a horrible Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2018, has received the jury’s decision.
Cruz was spared from the death penalty by the jury, who opted to give him a life in prison sentence, which shocked and angered victims’ family members and others.
Last year, Cruz, 24, entered a guilty plea for opening fire at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, murdering 14 students and three staffers, and injuring 17 others.
Cruz’s trial, which lasted about three months, included explicit videos and photos from the day of the shooting and its aftermath, a tour of the building, which still had traces of blood on its walls, and heartbreaking testimony from friends and family of the victims. The jury discussed the case for two days before deciding his sentence.
Melisa McNeil, Cruz’s lawyer, told the jury that a life sentence was a terrible punishment adding that Cruz might get targeted by other prisoners.
However, the jury’s decision was not satisfying for the victim’s loved ones. Many expressed disappointment and anger with the decision to send him to jail instead of having him executed. Florida still uses capital punishment.
Lori Alhadeff, the mother of 14-year-old Alyssa, one of the victims, said that she was disappointed with the outcome and that Cruz should have been given the death penalty, saying that she took her daughter to school and, instead of learning, she was shot eight times.
Under Florida state law, a jury can only pass the death penalty after a unanimous vote. In this case, although the five women and seven men jury agreed that there were aggravating factors that warranted a death sentence, as the murders were especially cruel and atrocious, a few of them also focused on some other factors like untreated childhood traumas. Ultimately, the 12 people jury could not unanimously agree that the aggravating factors were worse than the mitigating factors, which led to the life in prison decision.
Cruz will be formally sentenced to life in prison without parole on November 1, and family, friends, and survivors will get the opportunity to speak.
After the judge read out the jury’s decision, family members of the victims were visibly agitated and heartbroken as they expected the jury to give their children’s murderer the death penalty.
Tony Montalto, the father to a 14-year-old girl killed by Cruz, said that Cruz’s tough upbringing should not outweigh his killing of an innocent girl.
One of the victim’s dads also said that the decision gave people the license to kill and then claim mental instability as a defense.
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Governor, said that he believes that Cruz deserved to get capital punishment for massacring the poor students without any regard for life.
Broward County Public Defender Gordon Weekes said that even though his team successfully got their client a life sentence, they would not celebrate it.
Cruz said that he chose Valentine’s Day to commit the atrocious act so that no one at the school would ever celebrate the special day again.
The prosecutor focused on Cruz’s eight-month planning period, the seven minutes that Cruz terrorized the students and teachers at the school, firing more than 100 rounds with his semi-automatic gun, and how he escaped.
One expert witness said that Cruz was exaggerating, or faking his mental illness.
The Parkland school shooting is one of the deadliest massacres in the US to ever go on trial, as many school shooters either shoot themselves or are killed by police gunfire.