#NIKOLAS CRUZ TRIAL#

As with any persuasion campaign, graphic material is key. But winning death sentences is less about meeting any specific legal criteria than it is about getting the jury to hate the defendant.

To kill Cruz, prosecutors will have to convince the jury that the aggravating factors in his case (the number of casualties, the atrocious cruelty of the killings, and the “cold, calculated, and premeditated manner” of the attack) outweigh any mitigating factors (the possibility of developmental problems related to drug and alcohol exposure in utero, a troubled upbringing, his history of self-harm and violence against others, and diagnoses of depression and autism).

#NIKOLAS CRUZ TRIAL#

Nevertheless, the question of whether the state may kill Cruz is the only one that the trial in Florida seeks to resolve.

If a man can kill a single person and receive the exact same punishment as a murderer who massacred more than a dozen, in what sense does execution represent a proportional sentence? This is to say: When, as I expect, the jury in Florida decides to put Cruz to death, it will not be justice even by the logic inherent to the death penalty itself. Even if we were to set the price of one human life at another, capital punishment can’t deliver justice for multiple murder victims-nor for the wounded survivors. No punishment can fill the aching silence where the daily clamor of children used to be, or stir the brutal stillness they leave behind. No penalty levied on Earth can answer the suffering of a parent wailing for her lost young. And so Cruz’s death-penalty sentencing trial began on July 18. But prosecutors and some ( though by no means all) survivors and survivors’ families felt that leaving Cruz to die the slow and lonely deaths that men die in prison, amid rampant disease and sexual violence, would come up short of justice and that he had to be executed instead. There was no need for a trial whatsoever. Cruz had pleaded guilty his defense team had agreed to accept life without the possibility of parole. It could’ve been among the last public recapitulations of the Valentine’s Day murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. “There is no way to hear about how many times your daughter was shot by a cold and calculating killer that is easy to take,” he said. Listening to prosecutors describe in detail how his child had been murdered was wrenching. The father of a 14-year-old girl murdered by Cruz dismissed the prisoner’s repentance as “ridiculous” during an interview with NPR.

“I am very sorry for what I did, and I have to live with it every day,” he said, “and if I were to get a second chance, I would do everything in my power to try to help others.”Ĭruz’s regrets, issued before the families of victims gathered in the courtroom, did little to ease survivors’ grief and rage. On the contrary, Cruz recapitulated his guilt in each count of murder and attempted murder in court last October before issuing an apology for his crimes. No one-not Florida prosecutors, not Cruz’s defense team, not Cruz himself, who pleaded guilty to all charges levied against him-disputes those facts. Nikolas Cruz, 23, is guilty of murdering 17 people and injuring more with an AR-15 rifle at his former high school in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018.

Nikolas cruz