Jurors in Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz’s sentencing trial detailed the “tense” deliberations that resulted in a recommendation of life in prison — and not the death penalty — for the person responsible for killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
While Gov. Ron DiSantis blamed “a single holdout” for the life imprisonment sentence, there were actually three jurors who voted against the death penalty, including one female juror who was a “hard ‘no,’” jury foreperson Benjamin Thomas later told WFOR.
“She couldn’t do it. And there was another two that ended up voting the same way,” Thomas said, adding that the woman “didn’t believe, because [Cruz] was mentally ill, he should get the death penalty.”
Juror Melody Vanoy was one of the three jurors who voted in favor of life imprisonment, although she wasn’t the juror that was “not moving” from that stance. “Whether we took 10 hours or five days (of deliberating), she didn’t feel she was going to be moved either way,” Vanoy told CBS News Miami of the juror.
Andrew Johnson, a juror who voted in favor of the death penalty, told the New York Times that the jury “never deliberated correctly.”
“When you know that one person says, ‘This is going to be my choice, and I’m not going to change it,’ and that one choice means we’re done, that basically kills the morale,” Johnson said.
Vanoy said she wasn’t persuaded to vote against the death penalty until “the very last minute,” she told CNN. Vanoy also cited how “the system failed” Cruz throughout his life as the basis for her decision, noting that there were mental health evaluators’ recommendations that Cruz live in a residential facility, but “that never happened.”
Both Vanoy and Johnson described a “tense” deliberation room where the jury — which grew close-knit over the month-long sentencing trial — began to unravel.
“It got ugly,” Vanoy said. “There were negative sarcastic remarks. I heard comments like, ‘we’re going to let the families down.’”
She added, “I felt disrespected, despite the relationships that we had built. The energy was so heated that we wanted to get out of that room. They had to take us down for over 30 minutes to just give us fresh air so we can move around and separate. That’s how heated it got.”
Things got so heated that, at one point during the deliberation, the juror who was steadfast against the death penalty passed a handwritten note to the judge assuring that she was “fair and unbiased.” Additionally, prosecutors have asked for an investigation into an alleged threat made from one juror to another.
“Juror X spoke to a support staff member and informed the support staff member that during deliberations she received what she perceived to be a threat from a fellow juror while in the jury room,” the state’s filing says. “The State did not call Juror X back and instead, filed a Notice to the Court.”
In reviewing each count, the jury agreed that Cruz was guilty of the shooting. However, the three jurors believed that “mitigating factors” — in this case, Cruz’s mental illness — outweighed the evidence to justify the death penalty. In 2016, the guideline for a jury to recommend the death penalty in Florida was changed from a majority vote to a unanimous vote; juror Johnson called the change “a huge flaw.”
“I do respect the decision of everyone’s vote, including the ones that made the life vote, but at the same time, I would have preferred more cooperation, more involvement,” Johnson told the New York Times. “I’m not happy with the result.”
Foreman Thomas stated similar, “I don’t like how it turned out, but… that’s how the jury system works.”