(Reuters) – Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 17 students and staff with a semi-automatic rifle at a Florida high school, was formally sentenced to life in prison yesterday after listening to hours of anguished testimony from survivors and victims’ relatives.
A jury voted last month to spare Cruz, 24, the death penalty, instead choosing life in prison without possibility of parole for one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to premeditated murder for his rampage on Feb. 14, 2018, then faced the three-month penalty trial earlier this year.
Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer agreed to a prosecution request to first allow relatives of Cruz’s victims to address the court before the sentence was handed down. The sentencing proceedings began on Tuesday with victim impact statements.
Many victims’ relatives castigated the jury’s decision and criticized a state law requirement that all 12 jurors be unanimous in order to sentence a convicted person to be executed.
“How much worse would the crime have to be to warrant the death penalty?” said Annika Dworet, the mother of 17-year-old victim Nicholas Dworet.
Some relatives also chided Cruz’s defense lawyers, who fruitlessly objected to the judge about the criticism of them and the jurors on Tuesday, noting that Cruz had a constitutional right to legal representation.
Many victims’ relatives directly addressed Cruz, who sat inscrutable behind large spectacles and a COVID-19 mask at a table alongside his public defenders, wearing red prison overalls and handcuffs. He removed his mask when the mother of one of his victims told him keeping it on was disrespectful
Anne Ramsay, the mother of 17-year-old Helena Ramsay, told him he was “pure evil;” Inez Hixon called him a “domestic terrorist” for killing her father-in-law, school athletics director Chris Hixon.
Cruz was 19 at the time of his attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, about 30 miles (50 km) north of the courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. He had been expelled from the school.
