When the verdict was announced, the families closed their eyes, some nodded from left to right in disagreement. The author of a massacre in a Florida high school in 2018 will end his days in prison but escaped the death penalty on Thursday, a jury having rejected this sentence, however forcefully demanded by the prosecution for three months of a trial trying.
After only seven hours of deliberation, the jurors retained several aggravating circumstances, in particular on the “hateful, atrocious and cruel” nature of the 17 murders committed with a semi-automatic rifle by Nikolas Cruz in his former high school in Parkland, north of Miami.
But at least one juror felt that they were not enough to offset the mitigating circumstances raised by the defense during the trial, in particular on the difficult childhood and the mental disorders of the killer. It would have taken unanimity on this point for the death penalty to be retained.
The face crossed out by imposing glasses, Nikolas Cruz, 24, did not show any reaction to the reading of the verdict by judge Elizabeth Scherer in a Fort Lauderdale court. After the hearing, several families said they were “disappointed” and “angry”. They will be able to speak in court on November 1, when the magistrate formally endorses the incompressible sentence of life imprisonment.
Fetal alcohol syndrome
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz, then 17, caused fear by opening fire in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, from which he had been expelled a year earlier. In less than ten minutes, he had killed 14 students and three adults, and injured 17 others.
In October 2021, he pleaded guilty to murder and attempted murder. His trial was therefore aimed solely at determining the appropriate sentence. During three months of heartbreaking hearings, the prosecution plunged the jurors back into horror, by broadcasting numerous videos and taking them to the scene of the tragedy.
She also insisted on the premeditated nature of the bloodbath, relying on a video recorded by Nikolas Cruz before the action. “Let my massacre begin today. Let all the frightened children run and hide,” he said. This video was a “window on his soul”, he had “planned a systematic massacre”, launched the prosecutor Michael Satz on Tuesday, requesting the death penalty.
He was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, to a homeless alcoholic and drug addicted mother, and then grew up in a violent home with a depressed adoptive mother, his lawyer had pointed out, asking the jurors not to not give in to the thirst for “revenge”.
Giant manifestations
The Parkland attack shocked American public opinion and sparked a national anti-gun protest movement of historic proportions.
Despite his psychiatric history and reports of his dangerousness, Nikolas Cruz had indeed been able to legally buy an AR-15 rifle, a civilian version of assault rifles. On March 24, 2018, marches organized at the call of young survivors and parents of victims brought together 1.5 million people to demand stricter regulation of firearms in the United States.
This mobilization had not led to strong measures at the federal level, in particular because of the influence of the arms lobby in Congress. The country continues to be the scene of bloody shootings. Nineteen children and two teachers were still killed in May in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.