Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin Oliver, one of the 17 killed in the 2018 Parkland High School shooting, told EFE that the jury’s proposal this Thursday that Nikolas Cruz spend the rest of his life in prison is a failure in the system.
“The system has a fault. Something is missing that gives meaning to the verdict, “said Oliver calmly but disappointedly, who was not in Florida, United States, this Thursday to listen in person to the jury’s recommendation, which did not reach unanimous agreement on any of the 17 murder charges he faced. the author of the massacre.
“It was a surprise that a confessed murderer who took so many dead did not receive a greater sentence in a system that wants to be fair,” said Joaquín’s father, a Venezuelan national who was murdered at the age of 17.
“If it is not a reason for the death penalty, what is it?” the young man’s father wondered.
Cruz, 24, faced two possible sentences, life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
Under Florida law, the latest case required unanimity by all 12 jurors on at least one of the 17 murder counts.
“It is a system – the judicial one – that works this way,” said the disappointed parent, in addition to assuring that, in his opinion, “there was plenty of evidence” for Cruz to have been punished with capital punishment.
Regarding what comes next, he pointed out that in his case, “we have to move on” after what was determined by the jury that “allows the murderer of my son to live.”
“It seems unfair to me that my son cannot enjoy life and this murderer -Cruz- spends the rest of his life exercising or watching television,” lamented Joaquín’s father.
Regarding the members of the jury, he pointed out that “no one is better or worse” and that each person “has a different point of view” on things.
“I have already suffered a lot to get through this now, but I will move on,” said Oliver, embarked on a fight throughout the United States against firearms, which led him to hear the news of the jury in the state of Oklahoma.
Joaquín, born in Venezuela and brought to the United States at just 3 years old, ended his short life at age 17, on February 14, 2018, when he was gunned down along with 16 other people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, of which he was a student.
Since then, the life of his parents became that of two activists for the control of the use and sale of firearms.
Joaquín’s parents accepted the proposal of an advertising agency in which their deceased son appeared in a video broadcast during the 2020 presidential elections, for which they provided photos of their son and an actor with a physical resemblance recorded a message.
The jury on Thursday recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole for Cruz, who avoided the death penalty and will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The reading of the decision of the seven men and five women who make up the jury shows that at least one of them considered that the mitigating factors that the defense exposed prevailed over the aggravating factors to which the Prosecutor’s Office appealed, which requested the sentence of death.
