FORT LAUDERDALE — Jurors on Thursday beneficial life in jail with out parole for Nikolas Cruz, who pleaded responsible to killing 17 folks within the 2018 college bloodbath in Parkland, Florida.
Prosecutors had sought the dying penalty for Cruz. However for a dying sentence, the jury needed to be unanimous on at the least one sufferer and determine that “aggravating” elements — the cruelty concerned in against the law, as an example — outweighed any “mitigating” elements, corresponding to a defendant’s psychological state. Whereas jurors discovered that the annoying proof was adequate to warrant a doable dying penalty for the gunman, at the least one believed the mitigating elements outweighed aggravating ones.
The 12-person jury introduced the sentencing determination Thursday morning after a bit of greater than a day of deliberation.
Cruz, then 19 and now 24, pleaded responsible in 2021 to killing 17 folks and wounding 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive College on Feb. 14, 2018.
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Jury to determine: Life in jail or execution
Deliberations started Wednesday with the jury sequestered at an undisclosed resort till they attain a choice. The panel of seven males and 5 girls had two selections: Dying or life in jail with out the possibility of parole. If the jury opts for execution, Choose Scherer can observe the advice or select as a substitute to condemn him to life.
Florida has not carried out a dying sentence since 2019.
Prosecution says Cruz was ‘looking victims’
Lead prosecutor Michael Satz painted an image of Cruz as a cold-blooded homicide who meticulously deliberate out the 2018 Valentine’s Day bloodbath and has delinquent character dysfunction, not fetal alcohol syndrome as protection attorneys declare. Witnesses testified that Cruz’s start mom consumed medicine and alcohol whereas she was pregnant.
With members of the family of the victims packing the courtroom, Satz repeated ugly, bloody particulars of the horror that passed off on the primary and third flooring of the varsity’s freshman constructing, recounting vividly to jurors how the scholars and employees members died.
Cruz, Satz mentioned, was “looking his victims” and even returned to kill college students corresponding to Peter Yang and Joaquin Oliver whose preliminary gunshot wounds weren’t deadly, in line with health workers who testified in the course of the four-month trial. Learn extra right here.
Protection says Cruz was ‘damaged and brain-damaged’
In her closing remarks, Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill requested jurors to contemplate not solely Cruz’s crime but in addition his private historical past, describing Cruz as a “damaged, brain-damaged, mentally ailing younger man” who was “poisoned” within the womb by means of his start mom’s frequent use of medication and alcohol throughout her being pregnant.
McNeill targeted a lot of her argument on Cruz’s early childhood, recounting testimony from witnesses describing how Cruz’s late organic mom, Brenda Woodward, smoked cigarettes and medicines and drank beer whereas she was pregnant.
Throughout the trial part of the sentencing listening to, two knowledgeable witnesses for the protection testified that Cruz suffered extreme mind harm on account of his organic mom’s alcohol abuse.
McNeill urged jurors to contemplate Cruz’s historical past of psychological sickness in rendering their determination, and argued that Cruz ought to be given a life sentence as a substitute of the dying penalty. She urged jurors to decide on “braveness over consolation” and instructed them that their determination shouldn’t be primarily based on anger, revenge or hate.
“It’s the proper factor to do,” McNeill mentioned of a life sentence. “Sentencing Nikolas to life and being up right here and asking you to do this is the fitting factor to do.”
Parkland is the deadliest taking pictures to go to trial
The bloodbath is the deadliest mass taking pictures that has gone to trial in the US, in line with the Related Press. 9 different folks within the U.S. who fatally shot at the least 17 folks died throughout or instantly after their assaults by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect within the 2019 bloodbath of 23 folks at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.
