Death Penalty News

The mother of a 5-year-old girl who was thrown into the Everglades and left to be attacked by alligators spoke about the trauma she and her daughter went through.  On Tuesday, prosecutors asked the jury to send the girl's killer back to Florida's death row.  Prosecutor Abbe Rifkin told the jury that Quatisha Maycock, known as "Candy," was excited to start kindergarten, showing them a photo of her smiling.  About a month after school started, Harrel Braddy took Quatisha to a remote part of Alligator Alley, the stretch of I-75 cutting through Florida's Everglades, where he knew she would vanish. 

The El Paso County district attorney announced Tuesday that Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in a 2019 racist attack at a Walmart near the U.S.-Mexico border, would avoid the death penalty under a new plea offer . The decision marks the end of a yearslong legal battle, but the victims’ families are divided by the decision. District Attorney James Montoya, who took office in January, said the decision was primarily driven by victims’ families seeking closure. “This is about allowing the families of the 23 victims who lost their lives on that horrific day — and the 22 wounded — to finally have resolution in our court system,” Montoya stated.

A jury of 12 Johnson County residents voted Thursday to send 31-year-old Jerry Elders to death row for the murder of Robin Waddell, agreeing with prosecutors who requested the death penalty. The defense argued for life in prison without parole, saying Thursday morning that Elders’ actions came after a lifetime of drug addiction and going in and out of jails and prisons, being kicked out of his family home as a teenager and not receiving support from family members.

Deranged nurse escapes the death penalty as she admits to killing three patients - and has been connected to 14 more - by injecting them with lethal amounts on insulin A Pennsylvania nurse who administered lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients avoided the death penalty after she pleaded guilty to three counts of murder.

A British nurse was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Monday for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others at the UK hospital where she worked. Lucy Letby, 33, was handed a whole life order by Manchester Crown Court in northern England, meaning she will never be released. Letby refused to appear in the dock, prompting calls for laws to be changed so that defendants must attend their sentencing hearings. She was found guilty on Friday by a jury, in a case that horrified the country and made her Britain’s most prolific child serial killer of recent times.

Earlier this month, family members of some of the 23 people killed and 22 people injured by a mass shooter at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 confronted the killer for the first time in a federal court. They’d waited nearly four years. Some were barely able to speak through tears. “I still remember everything so clearly, even though I have tried to erase it from my memory,” one teenager said, according to media reports. They should not bear these memories alone. Against the waves of gun violence that seem to regularly beat against this country, we have called for a vigil of memory, testimony and witnessing. At times we have mourned alongside communities. Other times we have called for action. Steady oars in angry waters.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty. Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases. Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the sentence was read. U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado.

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A white Texas gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in 2019 returns to court Wednesday for sentencing in a mass shooting that targeted Hispanic shoppers in the border city of El Paso. Patrick Crusius, 24, is set to receive multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Although the federal government did not seek the death penalty, Texas prosecutors have not taken lethal injection off the table under a separate case in state court. Investigators say the shooting was preceded by Crusius posting a racist screed online.

The victims' families said justice was served 33 years and 44 days later. The families of the victims in a Cape Coral decades-old double homicide sighed, cried and ultimately clapped, thanking the judge, after Joseph Zieler was sentenced to death. Relatives of 11-year-old Robin Cornell and her babysitter, Lisa Story, 32, said it's taken 33 years and 44 days. "June 26 is the new date to remember," family and friends reinforced for each other as they hugged. "I was broken beyond what I ever thought I could come from," Jan Cornell, Robin Cornell's mother, testified. Jan Cornell said she couldn't let it go.

The suspect accused of using an AR-style rifle to terrorize a Colorado LGBT nightclub – killing five people and injuring 19 others – has pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder. Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was sentenced Monday to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the 2022 massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Judge Michael McHenry also sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges. Aldrich also received a four-year sentence for bias-motivated charges, which are akin to hate-crime charges in other states. Prosecutors could not seek the death penalty because in 2020, Colorado abolished the death penalty – becoming the 22nd state to do so.

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — A federal judge is considering a joint motion to push back the sentencing hearing for the El Paso Walmart mass shooter. Defense attorneys for Patrick Crusius and United States prosecutors asked to have the sentencing start on July 5 at 9 a.m. The hearing is currently scheduled to begin on June 30. "This request is not for the purpose of delay, but rather to lessen the logistical burden on those wishing to participate and to allow for the greatest number of participants to attend the entirety of the proceedings," the joint motion filed Saturday stated. If United States District Judge David C. Guaderrama signs off on the motion, the sentencing will proceed as follows: On July 5, the pre-sentence report will be discussed and if any objections are announced, they will be resolved, the document states.

‘I have to take responsibility’ COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The suspect in a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub is expected to strike a plea deal to state murder and hate charges that would ensure at least a life sentence for the attack that killed five people and wounded 17, several survivors told The Associated Press. Word of a possible legal resolution of last year’s Club Q massacre follows a series of jailhouse phone calls from the suspect to the AP expressing remorse and the intention to face the consequences at the next scheduled court hearing this month.

The federal jury deciding on the punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, convicted last month of killing 8 people with a truck, has heard from more than 20 witnesses. A little girl standing on her toes to place her palm on her deceased father’s image on a television screen. A mother who has left her son’s bedroom exactly as it was on Halloween 2017. A man married to a woman who lost her legs who clutches a pair of her socks in bed every night, yearning for the contact of her feet. The federal jury deciding on a death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, the man convicted last month of killing 8 people and injuring many others in a truck attack inspired by the Islamic State, has heard from more than 20 witnesses, including victims, relatives and bystanders. On Wednesday, the prosecution rested its case and Mr. Saipov’s lawyers began trying to save his life.

The gunman (pictured) who murdered 17 people at a Florida high school was formally sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  After a months-long trial, a jury in October recommended Nikolas Cruz, 24, be sentenced to life in prison for the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he killed 14 students and three school staff members Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer sentenced Cruz  to serve a life sentence with no possibility of parole for each of the 17 counts of murder to which he had pleaded guilty, with the sentences to run consecutively.  Scherer also imposed a sentence of life in prison with a minimum of 20 years to serve on 14 of the 17 counts of attempted murder, and life without the possibility of parole for the remaining three counts of attempted murder. RELATED |  Spared execution, Nikolas Cruz faces dreadful, possibly violent life in prison RELATED | Nikolas Cruz has avoided the death penalty. Here’...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz's two-day sentencing hearing begins Tuesday with the families of the 17 people he murdered getting their chance after almost five years to address him directly about the devastation he brought to their lives. After they and the 17 people Cruz wounded get their chance to speak, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer on Wednesday will formally sentence him to life in prison without parole for his Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She has no other option as the jury in his recently concluded penalty trial could not unanimously agree that the 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student deserved a death sentence. The families gave highly emotional statements during the trial, but were restricted about what they could tell jurors: They could only describe their loved ones and the toll the killings had on their lives. The wounded could only say what happened to them. They were barred fr...

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...

Nothing will ever excuse what Nickolas Cruz did. But some things do help explain it. By way of background, on February 14, 2018 – Valentine’s Day – Cruz walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and massacred 17 people – 14 students and three staff members. It’s the deadliest high school shooting in US history, surpassing Columbine which claimed 15 lives. Fast forward four years to the testimony last week of Cruz’s half-sister, Danielle Woodard, during the penalty phase of the trial (Cruz has already pled guilty, the trial is simply for a jury to determine whether he’s jailed for life without the possibility of parole, or given a death sentence). The testimony from Woodard – who is also in prison awaiting trial on car-jacking charges – is tragic and gut-wrenching. Their mother, Brenda Woodard, was a drug addict and alcoholic, and worked as a prostitute. She told her daughter that her younger brother, Nikolas’ conception was the result of a rape. Cruz was ado...

(CNN) — Alyssa Alhadeff would be in her second year of college if she hadn't been murdered in a 2018 mass shooting at her Parkland, Florida, high school -- and her father would be looking forward to watching her achieve her dreams. "Soon she'd go on to be a professional soccer player. She'd get her law degree, and maybe become one of the most successful business negotiation lawyers the world would see," Ilan Alhadeff told a Broward County courtroom Tuesday, testifying in the death penalty trial of his daughter's killer. "She was supposed to get married, and I was going to have my father-daughter dance," he said, his voice breaking. "She would have had a beautiful family, four kids, live in a gorgeous house -- a beach house on the side. "All those plans came to an end with Alyssa's murder," he said. Families of the 17 people killed in the Parkland school shooting continue to take the stand Tuesday, offering victim impact statements ...