Author of a massacre that left 17 people dead, Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison by a jury this Thursday (13). He killed 14 students and three staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a small town north of Miami, in February 2018.
Lead prosecutor Michael Satz called for the death penalty for the 24-year-old defendant, insisting the shooting was “a systematic massacre” planned months in advance, but the jury ruled out the possibility. The request for the death penalty must be unanimous and at least one or more of the 12 jurors – seven men and five women – considered that there were extenuating circumstances that did not justify such a punishment.
During his argument, Satz went back to describing, in detail, Cruz’s steps on that Valentine’s Day (corresponding to Valentine’s Day, which in Brazil takes place on June 12). The killer, then 19, arrived from Uber at the school he had been expelled from a year earlier for disciplinary reasons. In just nine minutes, he killed 17 people and wounded 17 others, using a semi-automatic rifle he carried hidden in a backpack.
Cruz pleaded guilty to the murders last year. During the trial, he apologized for the crimes and that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole to dedicate his life to helping others.
As the verdict was read Thursday in a courtroom in Fort Lauderdale, Cruz stared at the defense table as several of the victims’ public sector relatives shook their heads, disappointed by the sentence.
Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s attorney, asked the jury for compassion. She described the defendant as a troubled young man born with the disorder to a mother who struggled with homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction before putting him up for adoption. She said the prosecutor was trying to dehumanize Cruz, whom she described as “a frail, brain-damaged and mentally ill young man”.
Despite his psychiatric history, Cruz was able to legally purchase the rifle used in the massacre, which reignited the debate over gun control in the United States.
Some of the teenagers who survived the Parkland attack formed “March for Our Lives,” an organization that calls for gun control legislation, such as a ban on assault rifles.
In June, President Joe Biden signed the first major reform of the federal law on firearms control, but it did not include a ban on semiautomatics.
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