- A jury recommended that Nikolas Cruz be sentenced to life in prison for the Parkland shooting.
- The 24-year-old pleaded guilty last year to killing 14 students and three staff members.
A jury has recommended that Nikolas Cruz be sentenced to life in prison without parole in connection to the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in which he killed 17 people.
The jury announced their decision on Thursday morning, the second day of deliberations.
Last year, the 24-year-old pleaded guilty to murdering 14 students and three staff members in the February 14, 2018, shooting at Parkland, Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
As each verdict was read out on Thursday, family members in the courtroom could be seen growing more and more upset that the jury was not recommending the death sentence.
Parents of the victims who were watching in court wiped away tears as the recommendations were read out.
Meanwhile, the gunman stayed silent throughout the lengthy verdict reading, mainly keeping his head and eyes down.
All jurors would have needed to be in agreement to recommend the death penalty for the gunman.
The jury's verdict brings the trial to an end after three months of heartbreaking testimony from survivors, family members of the victims, and a visit to the still blood-spattered school building.
The gunman's defense attorney, Melisa McNeill, never disputed that he committed the massacre but said his mother's excessive drinking during pregnancy damaged his brain and set him on a path toward violence.
Prosecutors tried to pull apart the idea that the gunman was neurologically handicapped by showing how he spent months planning the shooting and describing his smooth movements with the gun during the massacre.
After the verdict was announced, parents of the Parkland victims offered strong words against the jury's decision.
Lori and Ilan Alhadeff, whose daughter, Alyssa, was killed in the mass shooting, said jurors "set a precedent for the next mass killing" by giving the gunman a life sentence rather than the death penalty.
"I am disgusted with our legal system I am disgusted with those jurors. I am disgusted with this system," Ilan Alhadeff said.
Lori Alhadeff added, "We are beyond disappointed with the outcome today. This should have been the death penalty 100%. Seventeen people were brutally murdered on February 14, 2018."
The gunman pleaded guilty to all charges against him — 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder — in October 2021.
His trial was focused on what sentence he would face, whether that be life in prison or the death penalty.
The Parkland shooting remains one of the deadliest school shootings in the history of the United States. The gunman, who was 19 at the time, was arrested an hour after the shooting and taken to Broward County jail.