From News Nation:
“Parkland school shooter to
get life without parole”
Florida school shooter Nikolas
Cruz will be sentenced to life without parole for the 2018 murder of 17 people
at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after the jury said
Thursday that it could not unanimously agree that he should be executed — a
decision that left some parents in tears as they exited the courtroom.
While it found there were
aggravating circumstances that could warrant the death penalty, jury members
also found that there were mitigating factors that prevented the imposition of
the penalty. The recommendation came in the second day of deliberations, 15
minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used and after a delay
while the court went through all the juror submissions. Under Florida law, a
death sentence requires a unanimous vote on at least one count. Circuit Judge
Elizabeth Scherer will formally issue the life sentences Nov. 1. Relatives,
along with the students and teachers Cruz wounded, will be given the
opportunity to speak at the sentencing hearing.
Cruz, his hair unkempt, largely
sat hunched over and stared at the table as the jury’s recommendations were
read. Rumblings grew from the family section — packed with about three dozen
parents, spouses and other relatives of the victims — as life sentences were
announced. Many shook their heads, looked angry or covered their eyes, as the
judge spent 50 minutes reading the jury’s decision for each victim. Some parents
sobbed as they left court. The decision brought an end to a three-month trial
that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its
aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of
the still blood-spattered building. The jury of 12 people had asked late
Wednesday to see the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, but the Broward County
Sheriff’s Office security team objected, even though the gun has been made
inoperable and Cruz’s ammunition would be removed from the jury room. Lead
prosecutor Mike Satz, who has more the five decades of experience, pointed out
that in every murder case he has tried or knows, jurors got to examine and
handle the weapon in their room — and he said a knife or machete is more
dangerous than a gun without a firing pin. Security has never been an issue, he
said. Cruz’s attorneys had no objection to jurors seeing the gun.
Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year
ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on
Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine’s Day to make it impossible for
Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again. The jury will
determine only if Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole. For Cruz
to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous. During the prosecution’s
rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz’s smooth movements with the
gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological
disorders, as claimed by his attorneys. Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill
and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they
say his birth mother’s excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal
alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.
The massacre is the deadliest
mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the
U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their
attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at
an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.
^ He should have gotten the Death
Penalty. Even when they say “Life Without Parole” there seems to always be
Parole Hearings and the chance to get out after so many years have passed and he
doesn’t deserve to ever get out. ^
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