As of Thursday October 13th, the long-awaited sentencing of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz has come to a conclusion that upset many. The Parkland school gunman has been spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to life in prison by a divided Florida jury for the violent massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that claimed the lives of fourteen students and three staff members. Parents of the victims are upset and outraged at the result of the jurors’ decision and bring into question why the death penalty exists if it’s not being used for cases such as this one. 

The already suffering parents and families of the victims are now suffering further at the hands of the jurors and the decision that was made. Sentencing Cruz to the death penalty would ensure that he can no longer have any impact or influence on the world, allowing the victim’s families to get some kind of closure. During her closing argument, Melisa McNeill, Cruz’s lead public defender, told the jury on Tuesday that the life sentence would still be a horrible punishment and she suggested that other prisoners might target him. 

This was still not enough for the victim’s family members who stood before television cameras expressing their anger and shock at the jury’s decision. One parent, Tony Montalto, the father of 14-year-old victim Gina, describes the jury’s decision as a “gut punch” for the victims’ families. Montalto is only one of the many parents of the victims who feel the sentence is unjust. Montalto laments that “the monster that killed them gets to live to see another day.” 

By definition, the purpose of a life sentence is to allow convicted criminals “to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term.” This being said, the results of the trial provide Cruz with a chance at life, which is the very thing he took away from the seventeen victims of the massacre. In prison Cruz will have the ability to receive an education, eat three meals a day, pick up hobbies and jobs, communicate with others, and do the many other things that the victims he violently murdered will never get to experience again. 

With the number of school shootings each year creeping higher and higher, there needs to be a foot put down. The parents of Alyssa Alhadeff, another 14-year-old victim, said that they were disgusted by the verdict. Ilan Alhadeff, Alyssa’s father, said,  “You set a precedent for the next mass killing, that nothing happens to you. You’ll get life in jail.”  Sentencing Cruz to the death penalty would send the message that extremely violent, heinous crimes such as school shootings, will not go without capital punishment or extreme consequences. 

The consequences of the jury’s decision to sentence Cruz to a life in prison far outweigh any of the consequences of the death penalty. The widow of 49-year-old Christopher Hixon, who was the school’s Athletic Director, said that the jury’s decision indicated the gunman’s “life meant more than the 17 that were murdered” as well as the rest of the community who remain “terrorized and traumatized.” 

Some argue that Cruz may have had a tough upbringing and in result, a neurological deficit, therefore granting him the right to a life sentence. However, prosecutors had asked the jury to sentence the gunman to death, arguing Cruz’s decision to carry out the shooting was not only especially heinous or cruel, but premeditated and calculated and not related to any neurological or intellectual deficits as the defense contended. To support this, prosecutors detailed Cruz’s thorough planning for the shooting, as well as multiple comments he made online expressing his desire to commit a mass killing. A crime this devastating and impactful on not only the Parkland community, but schools everywhere in the US, should only be met with a capital sentence.

In August of this year, prior to the sentencing, the twelve members and ten alternates of the jury went as far as taking a tour of Building 12 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to observe the horrendous scene of the crime and retrace Cruz’s footsteps.  The prosecutors who rested their case following the jury’s tour, hoped the visit would help prove that the former Stoneman Douglas student’s actions were cold, calculated, heinous and cruel.

Andrew Johnson, one of the twelve jurors on the trial, tried his hardest to persuade the other three jurors to sentence Cruz to death. Johnson and the other jurors in favor of the death sentence pulled various pieces of evidence out of boxes in an effort to change the other jurors’ minds. What many don’t consider is that Johnson and the other eight jurors in favor of the death sentence are also carrying the weight of the final decision that was made. Johnson describes avoiding eye contact with everyone in the courtroom upon the delivery of the decision “just out of disappointment.”

Florida’s law allowing for a majority jury vote had been in place for decades before it was overturned, but it was an outlier. Almost all death penalty states required unanimity throughout those years or adopted it. However, with the large number of people on the same page about what they feel Cruz’z sentence should be, it’s apparent that the majority rule should still stand. 

The president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, Ed Brodsky, believes the Legislature will next year consider changing the law it passed after a pair of court decisions rejected the old law.  “When there is an overwhelming majority and sentiment about what the ultimate penalty should be, should one minority voice be able to dominate and hijack justice?”