A jury Thursday recommended Nikolas Cruz get life in prison for killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, sparing Cruz from a death sentence after his lawyers argued he had a troubled upbringing including allegations his biological mother abused drugs and alcohol while pregnant.
The sentence caps an emotional three-month trial in which victim relatives and survivors recounted the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre in painful detail. The 12-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching their decision in the deadliest U.S. mass shooting case to go to trial.
In each of the counts, jurors found that prosecutors had established aggravating factors including that the murders were especially cruel and heinous but that there were mitigating circumstances that ultimately outweighed those conditions.
As the verdicts were being read, many parents of the victims gently shook their heads. One juror clutched a tissue, wiping tears from her eyes. Cruz mostly stared down at a desk. Later, as victim family members left the courtroom, some relatives sobbed and collapsed into each others’ arms. One said to another, “He’s going to pay sooner or later.”
The gunman had already pleaded guilty to 17 counts of premeditated first-degree murder, and jurors had to decide on his sentence for each count. Cruz also wounded 17 other students and school staff members during his rampage in Parkland, Fla., a prosperous Fort Lauderdale suburb bordering the Everglades.
The shooting galvanized students in Parkland and elsewhere to speak out against gun violence, leading to the creation of the student-led “March for Our Lives” gun control movement. The shooting, which Cruz carried out when he was 19, also accelerated school safety and security measures nationwide and prompted debate over arming teachers in the classroom.
Although the trial was designed to help South Florida heal after Cruz’s heinous crimes shattered families and left Parkland students struggling with lifelong trauma, it also sparked a discussion over capital punishment as well as whether society should show any sympathy to killers who may be mentally deficient due to possible prenatal alcohol exposure.
The jury reached its verdict just 15 minutes after it began its second day of deliberations. On Wednesday evening, about seven hours into deliberations, the jury sent a message to Judge Elizabeth A. Scherer stating, “We would like to see the AR-15.”
The message prompted confusion over whether a weapon could be sent into the jury room. As court officials worked to clarify the matter, the judge dismissed the jury for day. On Thursday morning, the judge and the sheriff’s department agreed to send the weapon into the jury room. Within minutes, the jury announced it had reached a verdict.
His sister died in the Parkland massacre. He wants the gunman to live.
Cruz’s sentencing trial featured weeks of gruesome, emotional testimony that included video of how he wandered the hallways of the school with an AR-15 rifle, shooting some of his victims at point-blank range. Jurors also toured the wing of the school where the attack occurred, seeing classrooms that had largely been untouched in the years since the shooting.
During closing arguments on Tuesday, prosecutors accused Cruz of carefully planning his attack for years, and they said he carried it out with ruthless precision.
Broward County prosecutor Michael J. Satz said Cruz began researching other mass shootings — including the 1999 attack on Columbine High School and a 2007 shooting at a high school in Finland — several years before he carried out his own assault at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Cruz also purchased his rifle a year before the attack and spent several months gradually amassing ammunition.
Three days before he walked into the school, where he was a former student, Cruz made a video in which he foreshadowed his plans by vowing to become “the next school shooter of 2018.” Cruz selected Valentine’s Day to carry out his attack, and he moved throughout three floors of the school’s “1200 wing” shooting his victims — at times pressing his weapon directly onto their skin before he pulled the trigger, Satz added.
“The testimony revealed the unspeakable, horrific brutality and the relentless cruelty that the defendant performed," Katz told the jurors. “This plan was goal directed. It was calculated. It was purposeful, and it was a systematic massacre.”
But Cruz’s defense attorneys urged jurors to spare his life, describing him as a “brain damaged, broken mentally ill person through no fault of his own.”
Throughout the trial, Cruz’s defense attorneys alleged that Cruz suffered from “neurological disorders” related to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Defense witnesses, including medical experts and some Cruz family members, testified that his late biological mother, Brenda Woodard, was an alcoholic and abused drugs, including crack cocaine, while pregnant with him.
“He was literally poisoned in Brenda’s womb,” Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s lead defense attorney, told jurors. “He was doomed in the womb. And in a civilized society, do we kill brain damaged, mentally ill, broken people?”
The sentence caps an emotional three-month trial in which victim relatives and survivors recounted the 2018 Valentine’s Day massacre in painful detail. The 12-member jury deliberated for seven hours before reaching their decision in the deadliest U.S. mass shooting case to go to trial.
In each of the counts, jurors found that prosecutors had established aggravating factors including that the murders were especially cruel and heinous but that there were mitigating circumstances that ultimately outweighed those conditions.
As the verdicts were being read, many parents of the victims gently shook their heads. One juror clutched a tissue, wiping tears from her eyes. Cruz mostly stared down at a desk. Later, as victim family members left the courtroom, some relatives sobbed and collapsed into each others’ arms. One said to another, “He’s going to pay sooner or later.”
The gunman had already pleaded guilty to 17 counts of premeditated first-degree murder, and jurors had to decide on his sentence for each count. Cruz also wounded 17 other students and school staff members during his rampage in Parkland, Fla., a prosperous Fort Lauderdale suburb bordering the Everglades.
The shooting galvanized students in Parkland and elsewhere to speak out against gun violence, leading to the creation of the student-led “March for Our Lives” gun control movement. The shooting, which Cruz carried out when he was 19, also accelerated school safety and security measures nationwide and prompted debate over arming teachers in the classroom.
Although the trial was designed to help South Florida heal after Cruz’s heinous crimes shattered families and left Parkland students struggling with lifelong trauma, it also sparked a discussion over capital punishment as well as whether society should show any sympathy to killers who may be mentally deficient due to possible prenatal alcohol exposure.
The jury reached its verdict just 15 minutes after it began its second day of deliberations. On Wednesday evening, about seven hours into deliberations, the jury sent a message to Judge Elizabeth A. Scherer stating, “We would like to see the AR-15.”
The message prompted confusion over whether a weapon could be sent into the jury room. As court officials worked to clarify the matter, the judge dismissed the jury for day. On Thursday morning, the judge and the sheriff’s department agreed to send the weapon into the jury room. Within minutes, the jury announced it had reached a verdict.
His sister died in the Parkland massacre. He wants the gunman to live.
Cruz’s sentencing trial featured weeks of gruesome, emotional testimony that included video of how he wandered the hallways of the school with an AR-15 rifle, shooting some of his victims at point-blank range. Jurors also toured the wing of the school where the attack occurred, seeing classrooms that had largely been untouched in the years since the shooting.
During closing arguments on Tuesday, prosecutors accused Cruz of carefully planning his attack for years, and they said he carried it out with ruthless precision.
Broward County prosecutor Michael J. Satz said Cruz began researching other mass shootings — including the 1999 attack on Columbine High School and a 2007 shooting at a high school in Finland — several years before he carried out his own assault at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Cruz also purchased his rifle a year before the attack and spent several months gradually amassing ammunition.
Three days before he walked into the school, where he was a former student, Cruz made a video in which he foreshadowed his plans by vowing to become “the next school shooter of 2018.” Cruz selected Valentine’s Day to carry out his attack, and he moved throughout three floors of the school’s “1200 wing” shooting his victims — at times pressing his weapon directly onto their skin before he pulled the trigger, Satz added.
“The testimony revealed the unspeakable, horrific brutality and the relentless cruelty that the defendant performed," Katz told the jurors. “This plan was goal directed. It was calculated. It was purposeful, and it was a systematic massacre.”
But Cruz’s defense attorneys urged jurors to spare his life, describing him as a “brain damaged, broken mentally ill person through no fault of his own.”
Throughout the trial, Cruz’s defense attorneys alleged that Cruz suffered from “neurological disorders” related to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Defense witnesses, including medical experts and some Cruz family members, testified that his late biological mother, Brenda Woodard, was an alcoholic and abused drugs, including crack cocaine, while pregnant with him.
“He was literally poisoned in Brenda’s womb,” Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s lead defense attorney, told jurors. “He was doomed in the womb. And in a civilized society, do we kill brain damaged, mentally ill, broken people?”