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Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was formally given a life sentence without parole on Wednesday, after the families of his 17 slain victims spent two days berating him as a villain, a coward, a monster and a subhuman.
Cruz, shackled and wearing a red jumpsuit, watched Judge Elizabeth Scherer but showed no emotion as she sentenced him to 17 consecutive life sentences for the Feb. 14, 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in suburban Ft. Lauderdale, and 17 other sentences for the attempted murders of the people he injured.
Scherer had no choice; the jury in Cruz’s three-month sentence trial voted 9-3 on Oct. 13 to sentence him to death, but Florida law requires unanimity for that sentence to be imposed.
Cruz acknowledged under cross-examination by the judge before sentencing that he is on medication but could understand what was going on.
The sentence came after two days in which the parents, wives, siblings and others of the murdered victims and some of the surviving wounded men approached a twenty-foot lectern to address him face-to-face.
The judge praised the families and the injured who testified, calling them strong, graceful and patient.
“I know you guys are going to be okay, because you have each other,” Scherer said.
The judge’s voice cracked as she read the first of 34 life sentences, but her voice gained strength and volume as she went down the list. Some parents and other family members wept as she read.
Families and the injured spent two days verbally beating Cruz, wishing him a painful demise in prison and lamenting that he could not be sentenced to death.
“It would be true justice if each of the families here were given a bullet and their AR-15 and we had to choose straws, and each of us had to shoot one at a time at you, making sure you felt every one of them, and your fear would continue to mount until the last member of the family to draw that last straw had the privilege of making sure you were killed,” said Linda Beigel Schulman, mother of Professor Scott Beigel. “That is true justice for you.”
Beigel Schulman said she takes comfort knowing Cruz is headed to a maximum-security prison where she will have to constantly worry about her safety for the rest of her life.
“From what I’ve heard, child killers are very frowned upon and hated in jail,” Beigel Schulman told Cruz. “I celebrate the day I am told that you have been tortured and released for your cold-blooded, premeditated, calculated and heinous murders, because you deserve nothing less.”
David Alhadeff, Alyssa Alhadeff’s uncle, told Cruz via Zoom from his classroom in Maryland that she deserves “a chance to rot.”
“You deserve the chance to absorb the look of terror on your face once you leave this room,” Alhadeff said. “He deserves the opportunity to know that justice will prevail at some point, causing him great anguish, minute by minute, day by day.”
*With AFP; adapted from its English version
