A jury has recommended that the shooter who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,Fla., be doomed to life in captivity without the possibility of parole. image source by google
Nikolas Cruz, 24, contended shamefaced last time to 17 charges of premeditated murder and 17 counts of tried murder. The question facing jurors now was whether Cruz would spend the rest of his life in captivity or be doomed to death.
Agreement among the 12 jurors is needed to put the death penalty.
The jury unanimously set up that there had been exacerbating factors in the murders Cruz committed. But at least one juror concluded that for each murder, the aggravating factors didn’t overweigh mitigating circumstances in his case, and therefore the death penalty isn’t earned — performing in the recommendation of a life judgment .
In the reading of the verdict wastes for the 17 counts of murder that stretched about an hour, it could be delicate for spectators to discern incontinently what the jury had decided.
Several people in the courtroom – including families of the victims — shook their heads in unbelief and had gashes in their eyes as it came clear that the jury had recommended a life judgment for Cruz rather than the death penalty.
Following the jury’s recommendation, prosecutors requested that those who were victims of Cruz be allowed to present evidence about the crime and what they see as the applicable judgment . The judge agreed to the request, which will be in weeks ahead.
The judge in the case, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer, can not overrule the jury’s decision. Florida abolished death rulings by judicial override in 2016.
Speaking to the press after the verdict, family members of the victims expressed wrathfulness and frustration.
” I’m shocked with our legal system. I’m shocked with those jurors,” said Ilan Alhadeff, the father of victim Alyssa Alhadeff.” That you can allow 17 dead and 17 others shot and wounded and not give the death penalty. What do we’ve the death penalty for? What’s the purpose of it? You set a precedent moment. You set a precedent for the coming mass payoff, that nothing happens to you. You will get life in jail.
” I supplicate that that beast suffers every day of his life in jail.
Cruz carried out the butchery on Valentine’s Day in 2018. He was 19 at the time, and had been expelled from the academy. He entered a academy structure through an uncorked side door and used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 14 scholars and three staff members, as well as crack 17 others.
Jurors began reflections on Wednesday. Late that day, the jury asked to see the murder armament. On Thursday morning, the jury said it had come to a recommendation on a judgment , about 15 twinkles after the jurors were suitable to examine the armament, according to The Associated Press.
Prosecutors wanted the death judgment
Prosecutors had pushed for the death judgment . In closing arguments Tuesday, supereminent prosecutor Mike Satz told jurors that Cruz had hunted his victims during his siege of the academy, returning to some of those he would
They heard graphic evidence from medical observers and viewed surveillance vids showing Cruz firing into classrooms and hallways, shooting some victims constantly,” Allen reported.
In laying out their defense, attorneys for Cruz presented evidence from counselors and a croaker
who say the defendant suffers from a fetal alcohol diapason complaint, a condition that they argued affects his logic and geste
. substantiations witnessed that his birth mama , Brenda Woodard, had abused alcohol and cocaine while she was pregnant with him.
poisoned in Brenda’s womb.”
Cruz’s rage is the deadliest mass firing to go to trial in theU.S., according to The Associated Press. In other attacks in which 17 or further people were killed, the shooter was either killed by police or failed by self-murder. Still awaiting trial is the suspect in the 2019 firing of 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.