Florida high school mass shooter sentenced to life in prison
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Nikolas Cruz hears victim impact statements ahead of his sentencing.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - Nikolas Cruz, who murdered 17 students and staff with a semi-automatic rifle at a Florida high school, was formally sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.
A jury voted last month to spare Cruz, 24, the death penalty,
Cruz pleaded guilty last year to premeditated murder
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 criticised 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 defence 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. Mrs Anne Ramsay, the mother of 17-year-old Helena Ramsay, told him he was “pure evil;“ Mrs 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
Some of the survivors went on to organise 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. REUTERS