Most Powerful Moments from Parkland Shooter Sentencing

I hope you ever breathe a moment here on Earth is miserable and repent of your sins Nicholas and burn in hell. We look at some of the

most

powerful

and dramatic

moments

at the

sentencing

hearing for the confessed Parkland school

shooter

. Welcome to the sidebar brought to you by long crime I'm Jesse Weber, it's the Parkwood Killer, there will come a day, it could be a week from now, it could be a month from now, it could be 40 years from now, you'll die when you die, it's my greater hope. They take you and put you and burn you and take your ashes and throw them in the garbage can.

I hope the mer, your creator, sends you straight to hell to burn for the rest of your eternity. Sentencing for the confessed Parkland school

shooter

is over, Judge Elizabeth. Seguro officially sentenced Nicholas Cruz to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This came, of course, after a jury recommended that the killer be sentenced to life in prison rather than the death penalty, since as you know, the shooter had pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder. and 17 counts of attempted murder for opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 and the jury's decision of life over death hit the victims and the victims' families particularly hard because this is not what they wanted and they left it very clear directly. after this verdict at a post-verdict press conference, but we had no idea what we would end up seeing at this

sentencing

hearing because, under the law, victims and victims' families can provide impact statements to the court before the official sentence. by a judge and sometimes these statements from the State can actually play a more practical role, they can actually have an important effect on the judge. a judge who has sentencing discretion perhaps the judge would listen to some of these statements and recommend five years in prison. as opposed to a year in prison, but here that was not the case for Judge Elizabeth, surely there was really nothing she could do, the jury recommended life in prison, so that is the sentence she had to give by law, but that doesn't That doesn't stop any of these people from giving incredibly

powerful

and possibly controversial statements in court and to give you a sense of that, I want to start with a statement from Linda Beagle Shulman, she is the mother of victim Scott Beagle, the 35-year-old geography teacher. who actually helped save the lives of several of her students that day.

I learned that here in Florida, the average death penalty case takes 18 years from sentencing to execution, which means you would probably be dead before you were executed. I will move forward knowing that you will go to a maximum security prison with other murderers much tougher than you, a prison where you will spend the rest of your miserable life having to look over your shoulder worried about every waking minute of your life and scared. Fear that someone will take you out of a prison where you will be another in me, a child recluse who plays a prison where your fellow prisoners are waiting to destroy you because, from what I have heard, child murderers are very frowned upon and hated in prison .

You'll remember your time in the Broward County Jail and see it as a hotel compared to the prison you're headed to, as far as I'm concerned real justice would be served if every family here was given a bullet. and your AR-15 and we got to pick straws and each of us got to shoot you one at a time making sure you felt everything and your fear continued to build until the last member of the family drew the last straw. I had the privilege of making sure that you were killed, that is true justice for you and this is quite consistent with what we have heard: the parents hope and pray that Crews is killed in prison, a form of street justice that clearly expresses their pain and anguish, but also his frustration with the legal system his frustration with the jury for not voting for death and we hear this theme not only that the jury was wrong but perhaps that the law needs to be reviewed because in Florida the law actually changed before 2016. what was needed was a majority jury vote to recommend the death penalty, but then it changed to become a unanimous jury vote and at least one parent expressed that it's not fair, how Can a minority vote govern after all if a jury votes for life imprisonment? in prison the sentence is life imprisonment now that is a completely different conversation for another day but I want to return to the statements and I must tell you that these parents and family members did not only direct their anger towards Nicolás Cruz the controversy What I mentioned before is when they directed their comments to the defense team, who argued that the death penalty was not justified and highlighted for the jury that the defendant's mental health problems are problematic in his early life and remember that, in a way, they won right in the They got life. prison, so the defense won here, well, here's Max Schachter, the father of 14-year-old Alex Schachter, who was murdered in Parkland.

You are making America's mental health crisis worse by misrepresenting what really happened to the Parkland killer just so you can receive fame. and notoriety and going on a book tour, there are so many people who really need mental health services and didn't get them, but that's not the case with the Parkland killer, his psychiatrist, his psychologists, his counselors, all these teachers testify in that sense, he was on medication for

most

of his life the problem was that he received no services or medication the problem was that none of it worked obviously you have a very high tolerance for murder God knows what you are showing your children on TV You obviously have no conscience if you don't believe this is the worst of the worst, how could you sit there listening to what he did and say this isn't the worst of the worst?

He chased down innocent children and terrified staff and then tortured them. it blew their heads off like a water balloon and they enjoyed it that's not on your worst list of murderers, you make me sick and it didn't end there, you see at one point Manuel Oliver made a victim impact statement, this is the victim's father Joaquín Oliver, 17, and decided to address something that the defense had supposedly done because the week before the trial started there was a hearing that was going to take place and before the hearing he even turned on the video camera in court. actually caught the defense apparently discussing whether they should throw the middle finger at the camera, while Mr.

Oliver decided to show that same gesture directly towards the defense team hiding his actions, the middle finger leg, apologize and put the finger means, you need to learn how. to give a middle finger so you don't have to apologize to anyone, these types of comments are what cause defense attorney Melissa McNeil to ask Judge Elizabeth Shurer to intervene and stop parents from making these comments towards them, but the judge ended up dismissing her, our justice system is designed the way it was administered in this courtroom, if he had gone into debt we would not have said a single word about it and we would have respected the jury's verdict, this is our system of government judges and your honor should be holding the Department's courtroom to prevent these families from attacking our children and personally attacking all of us who were appointed for this, okay, your objection is noted and the judge, oh wow, he had a heated exchange with one of the defense attorneys, but once he brought my children I think that's very inappropriate I didn't even know you have children I don't know what you're talking about about your children What about your children?

But the comment about my children is very inappropriate in this court to allow that kind of evidence, well there was, I don't remember any comments about any children and if there was, it obviously wasn't like that, it came and went without me noticing. account, so I can assure you that you need to sit down right now. It is out of place, in fact, it is excused. He has to sit in the back with his chief public defender. Mr. Weeks, please ask the lawyer in his office to sit down and not say anything else to try to threaten me. children and raising my children is inappropriate, going to the back of the room now that you have just violated every rule of professional responsibility I have ever had.

Never if you are going to come up here and you will do it because I asked you to. Leave this aside, whether you're sorry or not, you don't want one of your assistant public defenders saying something about my children. Anyway, the Poison that the court is expressing is the same Poison that the defense attorney had to endure all this morning. I picked up his children several times during the trial. Nobody knows if I am sterile or not. They don't know about my children. Sit down, sit down, judge, sit down, mister weekly, please don't summarily disagree, don't sit down.

I ask the court. the court go to the sidewalk go sit down you don't the courts everyone in this courtroom go sit sit down no one in this courtroom had to endure what we had to endure sit down Miss McNeil has made her children another spectacle at once During this trial, that was your choice, you have no right to have one of your assistants come here and suggest something about my children. Now please sit down, judge, it is inappropriate and out of line. Clearly, emotions were running high in that courtroom. Of course, there is the question of whether or not the judge should have acted the way she did.

That judicial temperament should have allowed Victim Impact statements to be directed to defense attorneys on the jury. We usually don't see that right, we don't do it. We usually see statements directed at the accused, but maybe the victims maybe should. The victim's family members should perhaps have been given the opportunity to say whatever they wanted to say. Maybe they should have an open forum. The law does give a lot of leeway for them to say what they want to say, so if the judge had attacked the defense and ordered them to the back of the courtroom, these are all outstanding questions at this point and again we can focus on that later. but we could also do a whole program of probably two hours about all of these really powerful and moving statements that were spoken by every single person in that courtroom, but I thought I'd end with this, the statement from Anne Ramsey, the mother of 17 years. old victim Helena Ramsey and, as you will hear, she tells and takes us back to the horror of that day, but she also explains how her family situation and experience was very different.

I lost Helena, my daughter, on my birthday, or should we. We have been celebrating, laughing, enjoying dinner, just doing the usual birthday celebrations and instead we spent hours searching fruitlessly for Helena in nearby hospitals because we were told she was injured, someone had mistaken her for Samantha Grady, who was often the case, so we thought. She was hurt, so we prepared for the worst and then went to Broward North Broward General Hospital, the main hospital, and asked about our daughter. I mean, the whole family was looking for our daughter and when we were at the hospital just looking at the response, we knew that they knew our daughter had died, but they sent us to the Marriott, they sent us to the Marriott Center and we felt like they should have told us at the hospital because the hospital is equipped with conference rooms, chapels equipped to tell people about the passing of their loved ones, instead they sent us to a Marriott, let me tell you, we were waiting there for hours and hours and hours listening the screams and howls of all the other families, my whole family was there that night.

You were in the hospital, they were taking care of you while our loved ones lay dead. A reporter asked me if he would have been shot if he were black and I had to stand there and think about it. I had to think about that because it's not that simple, if the shooter was black he wouldn't have gone through the door because that's the response, it's an aggressive response, he would have been stopped before entering the game, so I couldn't have said that he They would have shot, I can't. I mean the answer would have been different and that's how they treat us the same in the Broward schools my daughter didn't get her recognition the same with the Broward sheriff's office my family my whole family was there until 3 am well you were in the hospital and After all these statements, the judge imposed the sentence, but first she had some farewell words for everyone and me, my behavior, and if I, if I were in your shoes, and the way you cried with so much grace and has shown extraordinary restraint throughout this time.

The process is something I have never seen and as a group of people they are so strong and so united that if anything good came out of this event, I feel like by watching them I can know that everyone will be okay because they have each other and after the judge imposed the sentencing, Cruz was taken away, his defense attorneys left the courtroom, and the victims lined up atthe room to give the judge a hug. What an ending to an absolutely incredibly sad and devastating case. Thank you so much. Everyone for joining us here in the sidebar, subscribe to Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Jesse Weber, we'll talk to you next time.