Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz avoids death penalty and is sentenced to life

Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz has avoided the death penalty after a jury ruled he should be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The verdict was delivered on Thursday morning to an emotionally-charged courtroom packed with survivors and families of the 17 students and staff killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 14 February 2018.

Family members appeared stunned and shook their heads as the 17-count verdict was read out by Judge Elizabeth Scherer.

The jury found that “especially heinous” aggravating factors necessary to reach a verdict of death had been proven during the trial, but at least one juror found they were not outweighed by mitigating circumstances.

The 12-person panel had to be unanimous to reach a death penalty verdict.

The ultimate decision on whether to sentence Cruz to death will lie with Judge Scherer, who will choose whether to follow the jury recommendation.

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty in October last year to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others.

During a three month trial, the state described how Cruz planned his attack – researching other mass shooters online, making extensive preparations for his attack and recording a video where he outlined his plans.

His defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed the shooting, but blamed his birth mother’s excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

It is more than four years since Cruz, then 19, travelled to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018 armed with an AR-15.

He stalked the freshman building, murdering 14 students and three staff members.

In October 2021, Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder.

In the state’s closing argument, prosecutor Mike Satz outlined in gut-wrenching detail the extent of planning Cruz put into carrying out the school shooting and walked jurors through the graphic moments of the attack – including how he shot and killed some terrified victims at point blank range.

“The testimony revealed the unspeakable, horrific brutality and the unrelentless cruelty that the defendant performed in the 1200 building on February 14 2018,” he said.

The prosecutor walked jurors through Cruz’s extensive preparations in the lead-up to the massacre, describing the plans as “goal directed”, “calculated” and “purposeful”.

Mr Satz said that Cruz’s online statements are a “window to his soul” and urged jurors to review his YouTube comments and internet history where he spoke of his desire to kill as many people as he could.

“It has been said that what one writes and what one says is a window into someone’s soul and some of the remarks the defendant wrote on his YouTube were: ‘no mercy, no questions, double tap’, ‘I’m going to kill a s*** ton of people and murder children’,” he said.

“And on July 4 2017, ‘I love to see the families suffer.’”

He told jurors that “every YouTube comment, every search, everything that’s in evidence you can review when you deliberate”, saying that “what one writes and what one says is a window into someone’s soul”.

Mr Satz said that Cruz’s comments and plans online were what he “wanted to do” and “what he did do”.

“What he wanted to do, what his plan was and what he did was to murder children at school and their caretakers,” he said.

“That’s what he wanted to do, that’s what he planned to do and that’s what he did.

In the defence’s closing argument, Cruz’s attorney Melisa McNeill pleaded with jurors to show the mass shooter “mercy” by sparing his life when they deliver their verdict.

Ms McNeill tried to appeal to the jury’s “moral compass” on Tuesday, reminding them that each of them has an “individual” decision to make about whether he lives or dies.

“You have to live with your decision for the rest of your life,” she said. “It’s your individual moral decision.”

When they “wake up in the night” after the trial is over, she told they won’t be with their fellow jurors but they will be alone with “your heart, your moral compass”.

Ms McNeill said that killing Cruz will “change absolutely nothing” and will not bring back the 14 students and three educators that he murdered in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.