“I am disgusted with our justice system. I am disgusted by this jury. It should have been 100% death penalty.”
It is with these words, relayed by the CNN, that Ilan Alhadeff, father of one of the victims of the Parkland massacre, commented on the verdict delivered this Thursday, October 13 by a jury in the State of Florida. This one, specifies the American media, “sentenced Nikolas Cruz, the perpetrator of the Parkland mass shootings to life in prison”even if the prosecution had requested the death penalty.
Highly publicized, this trial aimed to decide the sentence that Cruz (19 years old at the time of the events, in February 2018) was going to receive for having opened fire in a high school in the city of Florida, causing the death of 17 people and injuring 15 others.
As explained by Washington Postthis trial constituted “the deadliest mass shooting case in US history to come to trial”. The 12 members of the jury deliberated for seven hours, and at least one of them (since unanimity for the death penalty would have been necessary) considered that the mitigating circumstances raised by the defense during the trial – in particular on childhood difficile and the killer’s mental disorder – could be used to save Cruz from capital punishment.
With this in mind, notes the daily of the American capital, this trial which will have lasted three months “triggered a huge debate about the death penalty, as well as whether society should show some form of understanding towards killers who may be mentally retarded due to possible prenatal alcohol exposure”.
“What good is the death penalty then? ”
However, there remains the point of view of the parents of the victims in the face of a judicial system which seems to them to be incoherent.
Lori Alhadeff, mother of one of the schoolgirls killed, summarizes this point of view in the columns of the CNN : “What good is the death penalty then? ”, if not to punish a mass killing in a school environment.