Judging Freedom - Death Penalty Trial for Parkland School Shooter

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

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And today, about 1,000 miles South of where I am now in Florida, jury selection begins in the penalty phase of the murder trial of Nicholas Cruz. You may recall the name. He's the deranged young man who killed 17 students, staff and faculty at Marjory Stoneham, Stoneham Dunham High School in 2018. Cruz pleaded guilty to murder, but without any deal. In other words, the government indicted him for capital murder, meaning it sought his execution if he was convicted of so much as one of those killings. The government would

not agree to drop the death penalty, so he basically pleaded guilty, saved the victim's family the misery and horror of a trial, saved the government the expense of the trial, but gained nothing for himself because now the second phase of this is the penalty phase. That's so because the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that in America, only juries may impose the death sentence. Normally, it's the same jury that convicted the defendant, but there was no jury for the conviction. He pleaded guilty in front of a judge, only a judge. The judge interrogated him to make sure he knew what he was doing, what he was saying, that he was truly guilty. The judge accepted the guilty plea, and by that acceptance, he was technically convicted of capital murder. Now, four years later, in 2022, is the penalty phase of the trial, in which once a jury

is selected, the government will put witnesses on the stand to testify to the horrors of what the families went through, to the terror that was caused in the school. The defense will put on witnesses to say this kid is crazy. He had a terrible upbringing. They didn't know what he was doing. That the best resolution for this would be life in prison rather than execution. If he is executed, and Florida does execute, he'll be the youngest person ever executed in the modern history of the state of Florida. So this is not an easy task for the judge, because if you recall this case, the publicity was extraordinary. It launched an anti-gun movement throughout the United States, which got very aggressive at times. Some of the surviving students themselves became celebrities in the anti-gun movement.

These young people have now graduated from the ones that were seniors at the time at the Dunham High School, have now graduated from college and are moving on with their lives. These people will testify as to what happened that day. Here's how the law works. In order to sentence a person to death, the jury must be unanimous. So the defense lawyers only need to persuade one juror to vote in favor of a life without parole, and that's it. If the jury votes to sentence to death, and the court thinks the jury made a mistake, the judge can undo that vote and sentence Nicholas Cruz to life in prison. If, on the other hand, the jury fails to sentence him to death because they can't come to a unanimous agreement

or unanimously agrees that he should get life in prison, the judge cannot change that. He cannot overrule the jury in order to impose the death sentence. He, it's a female judge, I'm sorry, she can only overrule the jury to remove the death penalty. And as with all sentences, there's 25 aggravating and 25 mitigating factors. The aggravating factors are the characteristics of the crime that make this worse. Was he sorry? Did he have a purpose? Did any good come out of it? Aggravating. We all know the answers to those questions. Mitigating. Is he deranged? Did he know what he was doing? Is he sorry? The jury will be instructed to check the list of applicable aggravating and check the list of applicable mitigating and then weigh and balance them and decide should this person be executed. My own opinion is that the death penalty is immoral

and unconstitutional. I understand how people want to impose it, particularly for a horrific crime like this, when 17 beautiful young children were cut down as they were approaching the prime of their lives. We'll see where this goes and we'll follow it for you. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. for judging freedom.