Jurors in the death penalty trial of Nikolas Cruz have agreed he should not be condemned to death but instead spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole for the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, the deadliest ever to unfold at a high school in the United States.
The Florida jury deliberated for about seven hours over the course of two days before coming back with their decision Thursday morning. Cruz, sporting a gray collared shirt and unkempt hair, kept a neutral expression as Judge Elizabeth Scherer read out the jury’s verdict — a sharp contrast to the devastation and shock etched into the faces of everyone else in the Fort Lauderdale courtroom.
Even the jurors, a panel made up of seven men and five women, dabbed at their eyes while avoiding eye contact with victims’ family members and shooting survivors, many of who exited the hearing in tears.
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland massacre, immediately blasted the decision. Since the shooting, he has become one of the nation’s most vocal activists for gun safety laws.
“This jury failed our families today,” he said outside court. “Seventeen families did not receive justice.”
Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was killed, tweeted that Nikolas Cruz “got everything he wanted” with Thursday’s decision.
“Prior to the shooting the Parkland murderer said he wanted to kill 20 people. He stopped after killing 17 including my sweet little boy Alex. Afterwards he didn’t want to die,” he wrote.
The sentence recommendation comes a year after Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder for the February 2018 shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Just 19 at the time, Cruz burst into the building with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle on Feb. 14, 2018, unleashing 140 rounds of gunfire inside the school where he was once a student. He killed a total of three school staff members and 14 students during his seven-minute rampage. Another 17 people were injured in the mass shooting.
Over the course of Cruz’s months-long trial, teachers and students testified about the horrors they faced that day. Some recalled cowering in corners while others remembered watching their friends and colleagues die. Jurors also walked through the bloodstained halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, which has remained untouched since the violence unfolded on Valentine’s Day almost five years ago.
Cruz said he was especially lonely at the time, and never wanted anyone at the school to happily celebrate the holiday ever again.
Lead prosecutor Mike Satz also played security videos of the shooting and showed gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos to jurors. He unsuccessfully argued that Cruz should be put to death given the especially heinous and cruel nature of his crimes.
“It was a systematic massacre,” he said during closing arguments, adding that Cruz was “hunting his victims” as he stalked the three-story school building.
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Satz specifically detailed how Cruz spent eight months carefully planning the attack. He did research online, with internet searches using keywords like “murder” as well as on how to carry out an act of mass violence.
Cruz’s lawyers, meanwhile, asked the jury to show sympathy and spare his life. Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill never denied the gravity of the violence carried out by her client, but asked the panel to see Cruz as a human separate from the gunman who killed more than a dozen people. She argued that he suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome triggered by his mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy. It was misdiagnosed as ADHD, McNeill said, leading to developmental delays and sometimes violent behavior.
The defense also alleged during cross-examination that Cruz was sexually molested and raped by a 12-year-old neighbor when he was 9.
“In a civilized, humane society, do we kill brain-damaged, mentally ill, broken people?” she asked.
In a shocking move, the defense cut its case short, calling only about 25 of the 80 witnesses they said would testify. They never brought up Cruz’s high school years or called his younger half-brother, Zachary, whom they accused of bullying.
Because of his previous guilty plea, jurors were tasked only with determining whether Cruz would be executed or spend the rest of his life behind bars. Under Florida law, a death sentence would have required a unanimous vote on at least one of the 17 counts, which did not occur.
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Prosecutors provided seven factors, including that the killings were especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, as well as cold, calculated and premeditated. Other relevant circumstances include the fact that he knowingly created a great risk of death to many people and that he disrupted a lawful government function, Satz argued.
Attorney Jamie White, best known for his work on civil rights cases and with sexual assault victims, including victims of former Team USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, explained that every juror needed to agree that aggravating circumstances outlined by Satz outweighed the mitigating circumstances detailed by the defense team, among them Cruz’s age and mental health issues.
“In the context of the state of Florida, in the most egregious school shooting, with 17 people massacred in a horrific, premeditated fashion, it might be troubling to some people that Cruz escaped the death penalty,” White said. “But the jury heard from a large number of witnesses on both sides, and we have to trust the decisions of a jury. I think to second-guess a jury undermines our entire legal system.”
Reacting to the jury’s recommendation, legal experts called it a “huge win.”
“That is a huge defense win for Cruz’s heinous acts. The defense — while heavily criticized for its actions — stopped while they were ahead and it clearly affected the jury in the best way possible for their young client. The victims’ parents may see this as a heavy loss, but there is no question this man will not be free to harm again,” said Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Rachel Fiset, co-founder of Zweiback, Fiset & Zalduendo LLP.
Scherer will formally sentence Cruz during a hearing scheduled for Nov. 1, granting those impacted by the massacre another chance to express themselves.
With News Wire Services
