|
A jury voted last month to spare Cruz, 24, the death penalty,
instead choosing life in prison without possibility of parole for
one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to premeditated murder, then faced the
three-month penalty trial earlier this year.
Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer agreed to a
prosecution request to first allow relatives of Cruz's victims to
address the court before the sentence was handed down. The
sentencing proceedings began on Tuesday with victim impact
statements.
A number of victims' relatives castigated the jury's decision and
criticized a state law requirement that all 12 jurors be unanimous
in order to sentence a convicted person to be executed. Some
relatives also chided Cruz's defense lawyers, who fruitlessly
objected to the judge on Tuesday, noting that Cruz had a
constitutional right to legal representation.
Many victims' relatives directly addressed Cruz, who sat inscrutable
behind large spectacles and a COVID-19 mask at a table alongside his
public defenders. Anne Ramsay, the mother of 17-year-old Helena
Ramsay, told him he was "pure evil;" Inez Hixon called him a
"domestic terrorist" for killing her father-in-law, school athletics
director Chris Hixon.
Cruz was 19 at the time of his attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland, about 30 miles (50 km) north of the
courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. He had been expelled from the school.
Some of the survivors went on to organize a youth-led movement for
tighter gun regulations in the United States, which has the highest
rate of private gun ownership in the world and where mass shootings
have become recurrent.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New Yorkd; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
[© 2022 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
