I saw the entire aftermath of the massacre unfold on live television. I saw panicked students and staff running for their lives out of the building as armed officers swarmed the campus. I saw the death toll rise higher and higher as more information poured in. And I saw the arrest of the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, on live TV as he ran from the carnage he wrought on innocent children.
Nikolas Cruz committed the worst mass shooting at an American high school in US history. In approximately five minutes, he gunned down 14 students and three teachers, and wounded 17 others with an assault rifle before fleeing. It was an unimaginably horrific crime that demanded the most severe and harsh consequences that the law could possibly impose.
Nikolas Cruz is evil in the flesh. As a youth he sexually abused an infant female relative, tortured and killed animals, and fantasized about massacring children so he could watch their heads explode. He is incapable of remorse, reflection, or rehabilitation. If the death penalty was made for anybody, it was made for Nikolas Cruz.
The senseless massacre at Parkland screamed out for the death penalty. It demanded it. It NECESSITATED it. Any verdict other than the death penalty in this case would not simply be an injustice - it would be akin to saying that Cruz committed no crime at all. It would say that his victims' lives were worth nothing, that his crime was not heinous, atrocious, or cruel, and that the entire concept of accountability and appropriate consequences for one's actions does not exist.
But the jury in Broward County, FL did not see it that way. On October 13, 2022, after barely three days of deliberation, the jury split 9-3 in favor of the death penalty - the non-unanimous verdict meaning that Cruz will avoid execution and instead be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
And with that verdict, the three jurors who voted to spare Cruz's life showed the entire world - including the grieving families of the children Cruz murdered - that their worldview and sense of ethical and moral obligations was just as putrid, warped, and ghoulish as it could possibly be. These three jurors were given a chance to make the right decision - to provide the justice that the community of Parkland had been waiting nearly five years for. They had obligations and they had a duty to provide justice.
Instead of providing justice, they shat on it. They took a colossal fetid dump all over everything a moral and ethical society stands for. And they set a horrid and ugly precedent that those who slaughter unarmed children in school are not the worst people in society, and that they shouldn't face the full consequences of their crimes, and that they get to keep the fundamental rights that they denied to their victims.
Now, Cruz will, of course, likely spend the rest of his life in prison without a chance for parole. His life - however long it lasts - will be far from pleasant. But life imprisonment is not nearly a just-enough punishment for Nikolas Cruz. He took life away from 17 innocent people, and destroyed countless more lives of families and friends of those he killed and wounded. Cruz didn't kill himself after the shooting. He didn't go down in a blaze of gunfire with the cops. He surrendered. He wanted to live. He knew his life was over, yet he wanted to live.
In the end, Nikolas Cruz got everything he wanted. He was the last person to ever show mercy and the last one to deserve it; and yet he was the only one in that courtroom to get it.
Despite slaughtering 17 innocent people in one of the most heinous crimes in history, Nikolas Cruz lives. His life will be a caged one - possibly even a miserable one - but even so, he lives. And that alone is nothing short of a gross injustice of epic proportions - a scathing indictment of the twisted and depraved mindset of the three jurors who still couldn't bring themselves to impose the punishment they knew Cruz so richly deserved.
Justice was not served on October 13. Justice was not served for the people of Parkland (or anyone for that matter). No, thanks to three pathetic and utterly feckless jurors, justice was cruelly and inexcusably denied to those who deserved it most. It was a wholly despicable and depraved stunt, and these jurors should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
I haven't the words to properly describe the level of revulsion, contempt, and indignation that I have towards the jurors who voted to spare Nikolas Cruz from the death penalty. I only hope that those three jurors never know a moment's peace ever again. I hope they never know a moment's peace for the rest of their miserable lives. I hope they are haunted until the day they die by the revolting and reprehensible decision they made in the face of common sense, common morality, and common humanity. They made the wrong decision, and their decision has done nothing but perpetually victimize a community that has already been victimized enough.
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