Spencer Finley – Staff Writer

sjf5814@psu.edu

Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, avoided the death penalty on Thursday, October 13, 2022. While Cruz has yet to be sentenced, the jury in his case recommended that he be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. While many people, including the family of the victims, thought that Cruz should receive the death penalty, the jury was unable to unanimously decide that Cruz should be executed.

Where Cruz will ultimately end up is still unknown. Cruz will likely be placed in protective management for some length of time, with some saying he could be in for as little as a few weeks and others saying that he will be there for up to a year. In protective management, Cruz will have more security and he will have a roommate, although his roommate will be someone who is also expected to be hated, and he will be allowed to work cushier jobs. The purpose of this is to give potentially tense inmates and situations an opportunity to cool off. However, this will ultimately be a temporary situation. 

After his release from protective management, Cruz will be sent to the general prison population. His existence in general is not expected to be easy. He is expected to be put in a number of situations that will force him into interactions with other inmates who may want to do him harm; he will be forced to work in any number of situations, have a roommate who may or may not want to do him great bodily harm, and will have to work a job which might be far less pleasant than one in protective management. He will also have far less security than he would in protective management. The notoriety and severity of his crimes are expected to make him a target for violence.  Violence is quite common in American prisons, with some 4,100 inmate deaths reported in 2018. This is a fact that all parties involved in this case are aware of. 

Per the Miami Herald, when the jury made its recommendation that Cruz receive life in prison without parole instead of receiving the death penalty, one of Cruz’s lawyers said during closing arguments that he would die in prison of natural causes or “whatever else could possibly happen to him in prison.” 

Many people were upset that Cruz did not receive the death penalty. Per CNN, . Others have expressed hope that Cruz will suffer in prison; according to CNN, the mother of one of the victims, Linda Beigel Schulman, mother of teacher Scott Beigel, who was slain in the massacre, expressed hope that he would “have to look over his shoulder every minute of the rest of his life.” She continued that “He should live in that fear, and he should be afraid every second of the day of his life.”