Death Penalty News

A former sheriff's deputy has been found not guilty of failing to protect students when a gunman opened fire at a Florida high school in 2018. Scot Peterson stayed outside during the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, near Miami. Mr Peterson, the school's resource officer, was found not guilty of 11 charges including felony child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury.

A police chief accused of botching the response to the fatal shooting of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, has been sacked. The local school board voted unanimously to fire Pete Arredondo, who had been on leave since June. His lawyers said in a written statement that he had been unaware anyone was inside the classrooms with the shooter. The firing came three months to the day since the attack and two weeks before the new school term begins. The attack at Robb Elementary School on 24 May was the deadliest US school shooting in nearly a decade. Many parents and relatives have expressed deep anger at the police response and there has been growing pressure for law enforcements to be held accountable. Mr Arredondo has taken the brunt of criticism for officers' 77-minute delay in confronting the teenage gunman, and is the first officer to be dismissed. Cheering was heard in the auditorium as Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District's board of trustees filed ...

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Melissa Lee comforted her son and daughter after a student opened fire in their suburban Kansas City high school, wounding an administrator and a police officer stationed there. Then weeks later, she wept for the parents in Uvalde, Texas, who were forced to bury their children after the massacre there in May. She said she was “absolutely” reassured when she learned her district had since purchased one of the panic-alert systems gaining traction nationwide amid a surge in school violence that includes shootings and fights. The technology, featuring wearable panic buttons or mobile phone apps, enables teachers to notify each other and police in the event of an emergency. “Time is of the essence,” said Lee, whose son helped barricade a classroom door and watched police enter his school with guns drawn. “They can hit a button and, OK, we know something’s wrong, you know, really wrong. And then it puts everybody else on high alert.” Multiple states now mandate or encour...

The sentencing trial for the gunman who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., more than four years ago is set to begin on Monday . After nearly three months of jury selection, jurors must decide whether Nikolas Cruz , 23, gets a life sentence in prison or is put to death. He has already pleaded guilty to all charges. Prosecutors are seeking the death sentence, while Cruz's defense team is hoping for the only other option: life in prison with no possibility of parole. (In Florida, life sentences don't allow for parole.) A jury of seven men and five women will hear witness testimony and review evidence, during a trial that's expected to last for months. RELATED |  Parkland School Gunman Faces Death Penalty in Rare Trial The jury must be unanimous in deciding to impose the death penalty. If a single juror disagrees, Cruz will be sentenced to life. The trial has faced repeated delays When he appeared in court last fall, Cruz, 23, pleaded gu...

A Florida jury will decide if the young man who killed 17 people in 2018 will be sentenced to death. 7 weeks into one of the rarest of American legal proceedings — the trial of a surviving gunman in a school shooting — another horrifying mass murder at a school convulsed the nation. The massacre in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 reverberated in a courtroom more than 1,400 miles away, where lawyers were deep into selecting jurors to decide the fate of the young man who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., 4 years ago. Lawyers for the gunman urged the judge to delay the trial. They argued that the inescapable news of more schoolchildren shot dead in classrooms would inflame potential jurors and that the shootings in Uvalde and in a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., had caused a national “wave of emotion.” But the trial, a complicated and tense affair that had repeatedly been delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, went on. On Monday, after nearly three ...

New footage has been released that shows how a deadly shooting in a Texas school unfolded. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed when Salvador Ramos targeted Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The video shows the 18-year-old gunman after he crashed his pickup truck, entering the building and - carrying an AR-15 assault rifle - walking down a hallway unhindered at 11.33am on 24 May. Police officers first arrive two-and-a-half minutes later. Two approach the classroom, but retreat after shots are fired. At 11.52am, more policemen arrive - armed with guns, wearing body armour and carrying ballistic shields, but they are seen milling in the hallway. At 12.30pm, another officer is seen stopping to get hand sanitiser. At 12.50pm - 77 minutes after the gunman entered the school - officers breach the classroom and kill him. The footage was recorded from hallway CCTV within the school, and portions have been published by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper and KVUE. Delays in the la...

The Supreme Court struck down a New York law Thursday that only lets firearm owners receive a concealed carry license if they have “proper cause,” a blow to gun control advocates that marks the court’s most significant Second Amendment ruling in over a decade and could roll back gun control measures across the country. KEY FACTS The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that New York’s concealed carry law violates the Fourteenth Amendment, by stopping “law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs” from practicing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The challenge, brought by gun owners in the state, argued New York’s law that only gave licenses to firearm owners who have “proper cause” was unlawful under the Second Amendment, because licenses are too often denied and the decisions are left up to the personal discretion of individual licensing officers. Justices agreed that the law was overly burdensome, with Justice Clarence T...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The head of the Texas state police pronounced the law enforcement response to the Uvalde school shooting an “abject failure," telling lawmakers that there were enough officers and firepower on the scene to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building. Col. Steve McCraw also said officers would have found the door to the classroom where the assailant was holed up unlocked if they had bothered to check it. Instead, police with rifles stood in a hallway for over an hour, waiting in part for more weapons and gear, before they finally stormed the classroom and killed the gunman, putting an end to the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead. RELATED |  Uvalde Texas School Shooting: 19 Students, 2 Adults Killed by Shooter, Authorities Say “I don’t care if you have on flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, you go in,” McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Tuesday in blistering testimony at a state Senate heari...

Since 2017, mass shootings in the United States -- described as shooting incidents in which at least four people are injured or killed -- have nearly doubled year over year. Already, there have been 212 mass shooting incidents in 2022 -- a 50% increase from 141 shootings in May 2017. The number of people injured or killed does not include the suspect or perpetrator.   UVALDE, Texas -- The death toll in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, rose to 22, with at least 19 children, one teacher, and a second school employee killed, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, Gov. Greg Abbott said. Abbott said the suspect "shot and killed horrifically and incomprehensibly" more than a dozen students and a teacher. The incident began when the suspect, identified by Abbott and law enforcement sources as Salvador Ramos, shot his grandmother. Initial reports from law enforcement said the ...