FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — From the day he was arrested for slaughtering 17 people at a Parkland high school, Nikolas Cruz was never going to walk free.
Cruz, a scrawny teen with a history of violent outbursts, was known to staff and students, many of whom identified him as the assault-rifle wielding killer who methodically gunned down victims inside the freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz was captured on surveillance footage and confessed in detail to the murders — to police, and on self-recorded videos found on his cell phone.
Even Broward’s then-public defender, tasked with defending the teen charged in Florida’s deadliest school shooting, admitted his client was the killer. Cruz was guilty, he said, and would admit it — if only prosecutors waive the death penalty.
Cruz’s life hasn’t been spared, as of now. But as Cruz pleaded guilty Wednesday to 17 counts of first-degree murder, experts say he is gambling that admitting guilt now may later help sway 12 jurors to spare him execution.
After Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer questioned him at length, going through each of the counts for which he admitting guilt, she pronounced him guilty shortly after 10:30 a.m. Cruz, hunched over in a black sweater vest and speaking softly, then apologized to the victims and their families — some of whom sat paces away in the courtroom gallery, some shaking their heads.
So far, Cruz’s defense team hasn’t spoken publicly about why Cruz has decided to plead guilty. The State Attorney’s Office has also declined to comment.
In Florida, capital juries must first decide whether someone accused of first-degree murder did the crime, in what’s known as the “guilt phase.” If the defendant is convicted, then the same jury reconvenes for the “penalty phase,” and prosecutors highlight “aggravating factors” — such as if a crime was “heinous, atrocious and cruel,” or the killer “knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons.”
Meanwhile, the defense at penalty phase introduces “mitigating” factors — in Cruz’s case, that could include the details of his tumultuous life, including being born to a crack cocaine-addicted biological mother, and growing up in an adopted family, prone to violent outbursts, fixated on guns and killing animals.
“If you’re looking at the chessboard, one of the calculations is the argument of remorse and contrition. That’s the one thing they could argue to the jury. They couldn’t have argued that if they’d gone to the guilt phase,” said Miami defense attorney Philip Reizenstein, who is not involved in the case. “They’re betting on the ability to talk about remorse. It’s obviously a difficult enough of a case, so even a small edge is important.”
The decision to plead guilty will certainly trim the length of the court proceedings. Prosecutors maybe won’t need to call many technical witnesses, or the perfunctory witnesses who are needed to prove evidence was handled properly.
But the State Attorney’s Office will still have to present many gruesome details — like medical examiner evidence about the gunshot wounds — and the emotional toll the shooting took on survivors and relatives of the students who never returned home from school.
“The prosecution can essentially ignore the fact that he’s pleaded guilty,” Reizenstein said of how the state may present its case.
The penalty phase is scheduled to start early next year, after lengthy jury selection starting in November.
Gail Levine, a retired Miami-Dade prosecutor who has put many high-profile murderers on Florida’s Death Row, said the suggestion of remorse may only fly if Cruz actually takes the witness stand. “It’s not as strong if he doesn’t get up on the stand and beg them for forgiveness — and then he opens himself up to cross examination.”
She also pointed to more subtle factors. Had Cruz contested guilt, it would have given the defense an extra opportunity to hammer home evidence of his mental health woes.
And normally, there is a time period between the guilt and penalty phase. Had the guilt phase happened, prosecutors would have presented all the gory details of the bloody rampage in that first portion of the trial — with the jarring details fading, maybe so slightly, in the minds of jurors.
“The government now only has to present its case once, and all those horrible details will be fresh in the jurors’ mind,” Levine said.
The penalty portion of the trial will still be broadcast to the public, and covered by news media from around the world.
Families of the victims — many of whom reached a $25 million settlement with the Broward School District this week over its handling of Cruz — will still have to re-live the trauma of that bloody day. And many of them don’t mince words about how they want the case to end.
“We want him to get the death penalty,” Mitch Dworet, the father of slain 17-year-old Nicholas Dworet, said last week after Cruz’s lawyers revealed the change of plea. “We want him to suffer.”
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