Fateful choice to be decided — whether to seek death penalty
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Among the suspects on the list of the country’s 10 worst mass shootings, Nikolas Cruz is alone in one thing: He was taken alive.
His arrest raises the rare prospect of a death penalty trial for a massacre, a huge undertaking with far-reaching consequences for all involved. Some would not be satisfied without an execution, while for others the trial itself would bring anguish.
The chief prosecutor here in Broward County has said that the killing of 17 people at a high school on Valentine’s Day “certainly is the type of case the death penalty was designed for.” A trial may be the only opportunity to lay bare all of the facts. But it would also probably be televised and followed by lengthy appeals, provoking years of public agony, as well as sustained attention for Cruz, who has already confessed.
Over years of mass shootings, from a university campus in Huntsville, Ala., to a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., prosecutors have struggled with this conundrum, testing political winds, spending days talking with survivors and families of the dead and reflecting on the intersection between morality and the oath of office.
Even Broward County’s public defender, whose office is representing Cruz and who wants to save his life, readily acknowledges the wrenching emotions that are part of a case that is only beginning.
“If it were my daughter, I would want to personally kill my client, make no mistake about it,” said Howard Finkelstein, the public defender, an elected position. Later, though, he said that perhaps he would “try to go on and build a future. I don’t know what I would do.”
Already, Finkelstein’s office has offered a way to avoid a trial: Cruz’s guilty plea in exchange for a punishment of 17 consecutive life sentences without parole. But Finkelstein recognizes that for some victims, that might not be enough: “I’m a father. I don’t know whether I would take my offer.”
Relatives of the victims of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland have not yet made their feelings about the death penalty widely known. Michael Satz, Broward County’s prosecutor, declined to comment.
Satz is regarded as a hardedged prosecutor, but he is still likely to consider an array of factors, including the odds of persuading a jury.
Although jurors condemned men for massacres in Charleston, S.C., where nine churchgoers were killed, and at Fort Hood, Texas, where there were 13 fatalities, they spared the life of the Aurora gunman who killed 12, citing his history of mental illness. In the Huntsville shooting, the prosecutor said his conversations with the families of the victims were a reason he did not seek execution.
George Brauchler, lead prosecutor in the Aurora case, said he had engaged in “serious soulsearching” about whether to pass up a plea deal and seek the death penalty. “This is as much a moral decision as it is a decision about justice, and that is not an easy decision to make,” he said.
“Until you are signing your name to a piece of paper that starts the machinery of government against another human being to take their life, whether it’s deserved or not, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Death penalty cases are the criminal justice system’s most complex, expensive and emotionally taxing. It can take weeks or even months to present volumes of evidence that can include autopsy after autopsy and the painstaking recollection of every crack or boom of gunfire and every word the killer uttered.
Expecting that Satz will seek the death penalty, Finkelstein and his deputies are already preparing for a “long, arduous legal battle.” Finkelstein said the defense would likely focus on mental health and the accumulation of failures by government agencies to stop Cruz from opening fire.