() — The young man who murdered 17 people in 2018 at a South Florida high school is expected to be sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, ending an agonizing months-long trial in which a jury refused to recommend a death sentence.
Nikolas Cruz, 24, will face more of his victims in court before Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer formally imposes the recommended sentence last month, an outcome that disappointed and angered many of the people’s families. who killed, including some who they confronted Cruz Tuesday in court.
“I am too old to see you live out your life sentence, but I hope your breathing moment here on Earth is miserable and you repent of your sins,” Theresa Robinovitz, grandmother of murdered 14-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff, told him. “And burn in hell.”
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which despite the continuing epidemic of gun violence in the united states keep being him deadliest mass shooting at a high school from USA
The state sought the death penalty, so Cruz’s trial moved to the sentencing phase, in which a jury was tasked with listening to prosecutors and defense attorneys argue why they felt they should or should not. be executed.
The prosecution argued, in part, that the shooting was especially heinous, heinous or cruel and that it was premeditated and calculated. The defensepushing for a life sentence, pointed to the shooter’s mental or intellectual deficits that they said stemmed from prenatal alcohol exposure.
I know persuaded three jurors to vote for life, which spared Cruz a death sentence, which in Florida a jury must unanimously recommend. Scherer must follow the jury’s recommendation of life in prison without parole, under state law.
Despite that, life in prison fell short of what many of Cruz’s wounded and the families of those he killed wanted.
“He shouldn’t live,” Anthony Montalto III, whose 14-year-old older sister Gina was killed in the shooting, said Tuesday, “while my sister rots in her grave.”
