Florida Jury Sentences Parkland School Shooter to Life in Prison

The trial of the former student who shot and killed 17 people and wounded 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has finally come to an end, with a Fort Lauderdale jury recommending life in prison.

Nikolas Cruz was 19 years old on February 14, 2018 when he brought an AR-15 style rifle and multiple magazines onto campus to commit the deadliest shooting at a U.S. high school, and he was tried as an adult. [In accordance with the wishes expressed by numerous family members of the victims to not promote the shooter, that is the last time I will mention his name.]

The 17 people whose names should be remembered are, in alphabetical order, 14-year-old student Alyssa Alhadeff, 35-year-old teacher Scott Beigel, 14-year-old student Martin Duque Anguiano, 17-year-old student Nicholas Dworet, 37-year-old assistant football coach Aaron Feis, 14-year-old student Jaime Guttenberg, 49-year-old athletic director Christopher Hixon, 15-year-old student Luke Hoyer, 14-year-old student Cara Loughran, 14-year-old student Gina Montalto, 17-year-old student Joaquin Oliver, 14-year-old student Alaina Petty, 18-year-old student Meadow Pollack, 17-year-old student Helena Ramsay, 14-year-old student Alexander Schachter, 16-year-old student Carmen Schentrup, and 15-year-old student Peter Wang.

The shooter, now 24 years old, confessed and pled guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, so the trial only focused on the potential sentence. Under Florida law, first-degree murder has two possible penalties — the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole — and the jurors must be unanimous in order to recommend the death penalty, and Judge Elizabeth Scherer will make the final decision on sentencing.

The question of whether or not to recommend death involves a balancing between mitigating circumstances presented by the defense and aggravating factors presented by the prosecution.

During the trial, defense attorneys claimed that the shooter was a “brain damaged, broken, mentally ill person” affected by his birth mother’s use of drugs and alcohol when she was pregnant with him and his difficult family life, including the death of both of his adoptive parents. The defense team drew the ire of Judge Scherer last month when they rested their case early without calling dozens of their scheduled witnesses.

Prosecutors countered by presenting evidence that included the months the shooter spent researching previous mass shootings, the preparations he took for that day, and his social media posts expressing his desire to “go on a killing rampage,” “kill people,” and “be a professional school shooter.”

Among the seven specific aggravating factors highlighted by the state’s case were that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” and “cold, calculated, and premeditated,” as well as disrupting a lawful government function (the operations of a public school), committing first-degree murder while committing other felonies, and knowingly “creating a risk of death to many persons.” Jurors heard heart-wrenching testimony from family members of those who were killed and students who survived the shooting, and were shown security camera video footage of the shooting that has not been made public.

Judge Scherer read out the verdict form for each individual victim, stating that the jury unanimously found that the state had established beyond a reasonable doubt multiple of these aggravating factors, at least one juror found they were outweighed by the mitigating factors argued by the defense for each of the counts, and that they therefore recommended life in prison. He will not be eligible for parole.

The judge will render the final decision on the shooter’s sentence in a hearing scheduled for Nov. 1.

This is a breaking story and has been updated. The original article stated that the reading of the verdict represented imposition of the death penalty but no sentence had been handed down at the time of publication.

Watch the video above via Law&Crime Network.