![[Death penalty - image of a stretcher with shackles]](https://i0.wp.com/outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Death-Penalty-1024x576-e1554217653419.jpg?ssl=1)
This past Thursday, after seven hours of deliberation, the jury for the convicted Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter reached the decision that he will get life in prison, without the possibility of parole, for the killing of 17 people. More details on this from the Washington Post’s Tim Craig:
On each of the counts, jurors found that prosecutors had established aggravating factors including that the murders were especially cruel and heinous — indicating that the case met the threshold for death penalty eligibility. But they also decided that the most egregious elements of the attack did not outweigh the mitigating factors presented by defense attorneys. [….]
The gunman had already pleaded guilty to 17 counts of premeditated first-degree murder, and jurors had to decide on his sentence for each count. [The shooter] also wounded 17 other students and school staff members during his rampage in Parkland, Fla., a prosperous Fort Lauderdale suburb bordering the Everglades. [….]
Although the trial was designed to help South Florida heal after [the shooter]’s crimes shattered families and left Parkland students struggling with lifelong trauma, it also sparked a discussion over capital punishment as well as whether society should show any sympathy to killers who may be mentally deficient due to possible prenatal alcohol exposure.
In an interview with CBS’s Miami affiliate, jury foreman Benjamin Thomas said the decision “really came down to one specific” juror who believed [the shooter] “was mentally ill…. And she didn’t believe, because he was mentally ill, he should get the death penalty,” said Thomas, who said a total of three jurors ultimately voted to spare [the shooter]’s life. “It didn’t go the way I would have liked, or the way I voted, but that is how the jury system works.”
After the verdict was released, one juror wrote a letter to the judge identifying herself as one of the people who had voted against sentencing [the shooter] to death. In the handwritten note, she said she’d heard from another juror that some on the panel were accusing her of “having already made up my mind before the trial started. That allegation is untrue, and I maintained my oath to the court that I would be fair and unbiased,” she wrote. “The deliberations were very tense, and some jurors became extremely unhappy once I mentioned that I would vote for life.” [….]
To apply the death penalty [in Florida], the jury had to reach a unanimous decision.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/13/nikolas-cruz-spared-death-penalty-parkland-shooting/
This case demonstrates the underlying arbitrariness of the use of the death penalty in American courts. As noted above, there was no question of guilt–the shooter had pled guilty. And the jury also acknowledged that the prosecutors “established aggravating factors including that the murders were especially cruel and heinous.” And yet, three jurors found that the shooter also suffered from mental illness sufficiently enough to not apply the death penalty.
The shooter in this case is far from the first defendant in a death penalty case to suffer from mental illness. And, as documented in the ACLU Report “Mental Illness and the Death Penalty,” many of those individuals have ultimately been executed. Take, for example:
Kelsey Patterson was executed by Texas in 2004. Patterson had a history of committing violent crimes but being found incompetent because he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He voluntarily committed himself to a hospital after one crime. Despite his history and diagnosis, Patterson was found competent to stand trial by a jury after two murders in 1992. Patterson talked about conspiracies against him during his capital trial. Even though the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Patterson’s death sentence be commuted to life, the governor did not follow the recommendation.
https://www.aclu.org/report/report-mental-illness-and-death-penalty
In fact, comparing the present case to that of Patterson’s really highlights the arbitrariness of the application of the death penalty in the US. In Patterson’s case, there was no question of diagnosis. And we have the added fact that a state board even found him incompetent. And yet he was still executed for the killing of two people. In the Parkland cases, there had been no past findings of mental incompetence. And the scale of the crime was almost 9x larger than Patterson’s, yet the shooter was spared.
Laying my cards on the table, it is for exactly these reasons that I oppose the use of the death penalty in all cases. There is simply no way to fairly and consistently apply it under our system of law. And given that fact, we shouldn’t allow the state, at any level, the ability to kill, especially given how arbitrary the application of the death penalty is.
Some may still want to defend the death penalty on moral grounds, pointing to the many Parkland parents who wanted to see the shooter executed. I do not have children and cannot begin to understand the depth of their grief. However, it should be noted that ultimately, the decision to execute is left up to the State, not the harmed parties. Further, if one wants to make the case that we should respect those victims’ families’ wishes, then what should we do when victims’ families want killers to be spared? Don’t their opinions deserve the same level of respect?
Unfortunately, decisions like this one, often have political ramifications. One thing to watch for is if the decision to “spare*” the life of the Parkland Shooter will lead to a legislative push for Florida to overturn a 2017 law requiring that death penalty decisions must be unanimous. Governor Ron DeSantis has signaled that he supports such a measure. If this happens, then Florida will join neighboring state Alabama in the dubious honor of being the only two states in the Union to allow the non-unanimous application of the death penalty.
Sadly, there is an argument that if Florida does make that decision, then perhaps the application of the death penalty will become a little less arbitrary, in so much as it will be harder for people not to receive it. But, I ask you, is that really a move towards a more just and moral society?
* – It’s deeply unfortunate to see the number of people who somehow think that life in prison, without the possibility of parole, is somehow “going easy” on an individual. I would recommend those folks take a look at the conditions that Alabama prisoners are currently protesting against for a bit of a reality check about how we treat prisoners in the United States.
