Death Penalty News

Three jurors, including one 'hard no' who could not be swayed, voted to save the life of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz  Three jurors spared the life of convicted Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz as they recommended life imprisonment without parole over the death penalty. Cruz shot dead 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018. In 2021, Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty to the murders.  Since the trial ended, multiple jurors came forward to speak about their experiences. The day before the verdict was delivered, one member of the jury explained how pro-death penalty panelists showed graphic photos to the holdouts and even brought the actual AR-15 assault rifle that was used by Cruz into the deliberation room.  The foreman said in an interview that there was one 'hard no' who could not be swayed among the jury. In the end, two others voted with that person to save Cruz's life.  The three-month trial included graphic videos and photos from th...

The life sentence about to be imposed on Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz could bring changes to the state's death penalty law FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- 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...

The court was packed, but you could have heard a pin drop in the moments leading up to verdict in the sentencing trial of the Parkland school gunman. It was the culmination of nearly five years of trauma, as jurors decided whether the gunman should spend the rest of his life in prison or be put to death. The panel of seven men and five women voted 17 times in all, once for each murdered victim. Each time, they spared Nikolas Cruz, 24, from death row. For victims' families, who had hoped the decision would resemble some form of reconciliation after the brutal attack, the decision has left them aghast. RELATED |  Deliberations over Parkland shooter sentencing verdict became ‘tense’ as jury struggled to make a unanimous decision, juror says "I'm disgusted with our legal system. I'm disgusted with those jurors," said Ilan Marc Alhadeff. His daughter Alyssa, 14, died in the attack along with 13 other children and three educators. A first-year student at Marjory Stonema...

In a South Florida courtroom, jurors stared straight ahead or gazed into their laps as their decision to recommend a lifelong prison sentence for Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was read aloud in court on Thursday. The group of jurors didn’t look in the direction of visibly emotional victims’ families, many of whom hoped the shooter would receive the death penalty after he pleaded guilty to massacring 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The jury’s decision punctuates a monthslong trial to determine whether Cruz, 24, would be sentenced to life in prison or be handed the death penalty, which would have required a unanimous decision from the jury. The judge is expected to issue the gunman’s formal sentence on November 1 and by law is unable to deviate from the jury’s recommendation of life. The deliberations became “tense” as jurors worked toward a conclusion, one jury member wrote in a handwritten letter to Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth S...