Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday repeated his stance that a jury erred in recommending that the Parkland school shooter be sentenced to life in prison instead of sentenced to death.
Nikolas Cruz will be sentenced to life without parole for the 2018 murder of 17 people at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, after the jury said Thursday that it could not unanimously agree that he should be executed.
Under Florida law, a death sentence requires a unanimous vote on at least one count. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will formally issue the life sentences Nov. 1.
"The state of Florida has executed people in our history who have committed really dastardly crimes, but crimes that didn't reach this level of carnage, and yet somehow he's going to be living off taxpayer expense for what? 50 years? 60 years?" DeSantis told reporters at a news conference Friday.
The governor said prosecutors were "pursuing some things with the jury," and he suggested that some jurors "were just never going to" impose the death penalty "no matter what."
"There's still a lot of disappointment from yesterday's verdict in the Parkland school shooting case to deny the imposition of the death penalty for somebody that massacred so many people in cold blood and cut short so many young and vibrant lives full of potential," DeSantis said.
"It stings, and it stings a lot of people not only in that community down in Parkland, in Broward County, but really throughout the state, and I think even throughout our country."
On Thursday, DeSantis criticized the legal system after Cruz was spared the death sentence and said the jury in the trial refusing to authorize a capital sentence "represents a miscarriage of justice."
"The only appropriate sentence for the massacre of 17 innocent people is the death penalty," DeSantis tweeted. "That the jury had a single holdout refuse to authorize a capital sentence represents a miscarriage of justice."
Cruz last fall pleaded guilty to 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The jury came to its recommendation of life in prison on the second day of deliberations.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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