Parkland shootings: Death penalty or life in prison, Florida high school shooter faces judges – 20 Minutes

The assault rifle attack on a Florida high school, which killed 17 people in 2018 and revolted the United States, was a “cold, calculated, premeditated” act, the prosecution argued on Monday, at the opening of the trial intended to determine the sentence of its author.Nikolas Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty to murders and the jury must only decide whether to sentence him to capital punishment or to life in prison without the possibility of parole. a big sweater, large glasses and his face covered by an anti-Covid mask, he appeared on Monday in a court in Fort Lauderdale, where several relatives of his victims had taken their seats. Some let tears flow when the prosecutor carefully rolled out his murderous trip on February 14, 2018, to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, from which he had been expelled a year earlier. “I’m going to tell you the unspeakable”, warned Mike Satz from his introduction, before recounting how the shooter, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, proceeded methodically in the establishment, firing a total of 139 shots, killing 14 students and three adults. He then slipped among the fleeing high school students, had a drink in a fast food restaurant, before being recognized by a police officer and arrested. “The murders were particularly atrocious” but also “cold, calculated, premeditated”, insisted the prosecutor, without mentioning, at this stage, the death penalty. Video of the horror This trial, which should last several months, has a character singular as it is rare, in the United States, that the perpetrators of such carnage survive their attack. It intervenes in a country reeling from a series of bloody shootings at a primary school in Uvalde (21 dead including 19 children), a supermarket in Buffalo (10 dead, all African-Americans) and a National Day parade in Illinois (7 dead). On the first day of hearing, the court was immediately plunged into the horror of the drama: a video recorded by a student was shown to the jurors, only the sound – screams, groans, crying interspersed with gunshots – being audible to the rest of the audience. Nikolas Cruz, then covered his face with his hands and bent over to his table. Apologies His lawyers should plead that their client, with a difficult childhood, is suffering from mental disorders and recall that he has apologized. “I’m really sorry for what I did, I bear the brunt of it every day,” he said in October. The prosecution will insist on the premeditated nature of the crime, relying on a video recorded before the action. “Let my massacre begin today. Let all the frightened children run and hide,” he said. “My life is nothing and has no meaning,” he added, announcing that he wanted to go to his old school in an Uber vehicle, armed with an AR-15 rifle. Despite his psychiatric history and reports of his dangerousness, Nikolas Cruz had indeed been able to legally buy this rifle, a civilian version of the assault rifles. The Parkland attack was the worst school massacre in the United States since the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 in which 26 people were killed.