After seven hours of deliberation, a jury could not come to unanimous agreement on a death penalty sentence—as required by Florida law—for the shooter who planned and carried out the brutal murder of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. He will now receive a sentence of life in prison without parole.
In a just country, the shooter would receive the death penalty. The punishment fits his crimes, would be a small salve to the victims' families, and would serve as a deterrent to future would-be mass shooters.
Though the shooter, who will remain unnamed here, had already pled guilty and been tried and convicted of 17 counts of murder, for the last three months, a jury has listened to harrowing testimony in the sentencing portion of the trial. The only options were life in prison without parole or the death sentence. Every day much, if not all, of the trial has been posted on YouTube. Anyone could watch the prosecution make its case against the shooter. It was beyond compelling.
For weeks, the prosecution made a clear case that the shooter had planned the tragedy for months, downloaded the school's bell schedule, purchased firearms and ammunition, and hyped himself up by listening to Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks," a song about a mass shooter. It was clear this was not a crime of "passion" or "rage" but premeditated and planned.
For weeks, the prosecution played security videos of the shooting, showed the jury gruesome autopsy photos, and interviewed medical examiners whose testimony described just what a gunshot at close range does to the organs of young teenagers. The jury saw the crime scene—which is of course, the school—still riddled with bullet holes and stained with blood, first hand.
They listened to the heartbreaking testimony of teachers and surviving students who blockaded themselves behind desks, ran for their lives, and took phone videos of their bloodied classmates dying. The jury heard parents and spouses give devastating, angry statements about what it's like to know their child was hunted down and murdered in cold blood.
As a mother of a teenage boy, I cried as I listened to Luke Hoyer's mom's testimony. She said she has left his entire room the way it was the day he died, with his cell phone charger still plugged into the wall, as if leaving it untouched might bring him back to her once more.
The defense's argument was bent on finding one person with compassion and mercy toward the shooter. The defense argued the shooter had been abused as a child and then orphaned; that he had suffered from and with mental disorders and developmental delays that allowed evil to seep in and take hold. All they had to do was convince one juror there were enough "mitigating" factors to overrule or outweigh all the "aggravating factors." Sadly, they succeeded.
"He's a damaged human being and that's why these things happened," the shooter's attorney Melisa McNeill said in the opening statement. "We must understand the person behind the crime.... In telling you about his life we will give you reasons for a life."
It is important, from a prevention perspective, to understand the psychology of mass shooters. But we should seek that understanding in order to prevent the kind of conditions that make a person so evil he premeditates and carries out one of the most vicious crimes imaginable. That the shooter was a damaged human being seemed obvious—but an abusive upbringing does not give a person an excuse to take multiple lives in a heinous fashion. Plenty of people were abused, neglected, orphaned—or worse—as children, yet did not become mass shooters.
As a society, we are tasked with walking the line between understanding risk factors, including how childhood abuse or other difficult issues enable a person to perpetuate a crime, and eschewing our duty to ensure such a person receives not vengeance—which is God's alone to give—but appropriate consequences. At least one person on the jury failed to do this. This is travesty to the victims' families, who have endured not only the death of a loved one, but the past three months of brutal testimony.
Answering awful crimes with severe consequences is society's most effective preventative measure. Consequences to mass murder, such as the death penalty, should serve as a message: commit this crime and you too will die. By giving the shooter life without parole, what is the message we're sending evil people who commit atrocious crimes against our kids? We should shudder to think of it. Nothing can bring those 17 people back, not even the death penalty. But by not agreeing to the death penalty and administering justice in whatever small way it could have, the Florida jury made a mockery of justice to the victims and their families.
Nicole Russell is a mother of four who has worked in Republican politics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, and the Washington Examiner. She is an opinion columnist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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