They have administered the death penalty, they have put people to death for particularly heinous crimes. One of the interesting factors historically is the understanding that most cultures, most civilizations, most nations of the world over time have had the death penalty. And so, in order to understand this, let's take the death penalty first. But then the larger question of the death penalty also becomes a part of this conversation.
And the big question being asked by so many is why. Now, as you're just thinking about crime and punishment, and of course, the goal of any system of justice is where the punishment to fit the crime, in American and in western judicial history, the big issue has been identifying premeditated murder or what is known as now aggravated murder as the particular crime that most clearly demands and deserves the death penalty.īut the death penalty was not applied yesterday in Florida. And with a legally obtained semi-automatic weapon, he ruthlessly and systematically killed 14 students there at that school, 14 teenagers, and then three members of the faculty, a total of 17 premeditated murders. Nikolas Cruz, who had just shortly before been a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, he had been haunting the school, he had been staking out the school, he had been in trouble at the school, and had made threats against the school.īut on Valentine's Day of 2018, he entered the school with malice of forethought, with the intention of carrying out mass murder. Sadly, there's almost no doubt that you remember the heinous details of this crime. Some of the most basic issues related to murder, justice, righteousness, the administration of justice, murder, aggravated murder, law enforcement, mass shootings, they all come together in this one story.Īnd yesterday, it came down to one courthouse in Broward County, Florida and the worldview dimensions are absolutely immense. But the big headline story is not the sentence that Nikolas Cruz received, but rather the one that he did not, and that is the death penalty. And that one story comes from the state of Florida, from Broward County, Florida, where in the sentencing phase of the trial of the Parkland School shooter, Nikolas Cruz, the jury eventually came back with a result that ended up yesterday with a life sentence, a sentence of life in prison without the opportunity of parole. Today, there is one story we have to talk about in a way that is unusually urgent.
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