Parkland shooter’s life sentence could bring changes to law
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - OCTOBER 13: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz tugs at his shirt collar as he is seated at the defense table for the verdict in his trial at the Broward County Courthouse October 13, 2022 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.Cruz, who plead guilty to 17 counts of premeditated murder in the 2018 shootings, is the most lethal mass shooter to stand trial in the U.S. He was previously sentenced to 17 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for 17 additional counts of attempted murder for the students he injured that day. (Photo by Amy Beth Bennett-Pool/Getty Images)
It wasn’t long ago that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz would have been looking at a near-certain death sentence for murdering 17 people in Parkland, even if his jury could not unanimously agree on his fate.
Until 2016, Florida law allowed trial judges to impose a death sentence if a majority of the jurors agreed. With a 9-3 vote Thursday supporting Cruz’s execution, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer would have likely sent him to Death Row for the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
Now, however, a vote of anything less than 12-0 means an automatic sentence of life without parole — a standard the Stoneman Douglas families and the head of the state’s prosecutors association want changed. That would again put Florida in a distinct minority among the 27 states that still have the death penalty where almost all require juror unanimity.
Ed Brodsky, president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, believes the Legislature will next year consider changing the law it passed after a pair of court decisions rejected the old law.
Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Friday press conference criticized the sentence, but wouldn’t specify what changes he would support.
“We need to do some reforms to be better serving victims of crimes and the families of victims of crimes and not always bend over backwards to do everything we need to for the perpetrators of crimes,” DeSantis said.
Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to the murder of 14 Stoneman Douglas students and three staff members on Feb. 14, 2018. That left it up to the seven-man, five-woman jury to only decide whether he would be sentenced to death or life without parole.
The three-month trial included horrific prosecution videos, photos and testimony about Cruz’s murders. That was followed by defense testimony about his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy that witnesses said created a brain-damaged person who began displaying erratic, bizarre and violent behavior at age 2.
