A Broward County jury recommended on Thursday that Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz get life in prison, and not the death penalty for the horrific murder of 17 people.
It was earlier expected that Cruz would get the death penalty, but the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict in this trial and concluded with the life in prison verdict.
Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer announced the sentencing for Nov. 1st when victims of this shooting will deliver their statements.
This verdict came in on the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after the jurors examined the gun that Cruz used in this shooting.
Cruz, now 24 years old pleaded guilty to the murder of 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School. The horrific shooting that took place on February 14th, 2018. According to his testimony, he chose this date so that the school can never celebrate Valentine’s Day again.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reacted to the news on Thursday and expressed his disappointment in the verdict.
“I think that if you have a death penalty at all, that that is a case where you’re massacring those students with pre-meditation and utter disregard for basic humanity, that you deserve the death penalty,” he said. “The jurors came back, apparently it was 11-1 with one holdout, refusing to authorize the ultimate punishment, and that means that this killer’s gonna end up getting the same sentence of who’ve committed bad acts, but acts that do not rise to this level.”
“I’m also disappointed that we’re four and a half years after these killings, and we’re just now getting this? You know they used to do this, he would have been executed in six months,” he continued. “He’s guilty, everybody knew that from the beginning, and yet it takes years and years in this legal system that is not serving the interests of victims.”
“This stings, it was not, I think, what we were hoping for,” he remarked. “It would have been a situation where, if that would have gone the correct way, I would have done everything in my power to expedite that process forward.”
The only appropriate sentence for the massacre of 17 innocent people is the death penalty. That the jury had a single holdout refuse to authorize a capital sentence represents a miscarriage of justice.
My prayers are with the Parkland families. pic.twitter.com/f2M0Fw1SLo
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) October 13, 2022
In the same conference, the governor also announced that all school districts in the sunshine state would be reopening starting October 18th after the devastating effects caused by Hurricane Ian.
Gov. DeSantis Announces All School Districts to Reopen by Oct. 18th https://t.co/jPwHdKqsgr
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) October 13, 2022
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