No matter the recent discovery that he and his younger brother, Zachary, are entitled to split a nearly $865,000 life insurance policy that apparently belonged to his deceased mother, in every practical sense, Nikolas Cruz is bankrupt. It remains only for a court to declare him so.
The newly discovered windfall presumably makes Cruz ineligible for the services of his public defenders, who have filed a motion to withdraw. The law allows public defenders to represent only indigents.
The court should deny the public defenders’ motion, declare Cruz to still be indigent and let the trial begin as planned in January, nearly two years after the Valentine’s Day tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Otherwise, the surviving victims and the families of the slain will have to wait even longer for justice than a presumed January start date of the trial. There’s no telling how much longer. The delay will be agonizing, as will the parade of delays in what could become a decades-long march to put him to death.
If the court grants the motion, the search would be on for private attorneys — there must be at least two when a death sentence is possible — willing to work for perhaps years for practically nothing.
Even if private lawyers could lay claim to half that money, it wouldn’t begin to pay the enormous costs of a capital defense, which necessarily includes expert medical testimony, jury selection expertise and possibly 10 to 15 years of appeals. New attorneys would have the benefits of the public defenders’ files, but they would be obliged to retrace every step taken so far.
There’s a good chance the lawyers would see none of that money. A surviving victim, Anthony Borges, and the family of slain student Meadow Pollack have already won default judgments in civil suits against Cruz, who did not contest them. One of the plaintiff attorneys has announced plans to go after the money and expects that “a bunch of families” will follow suit.
There are two certainties that bear consideration about the future of Cruz, who in return for life without parole, is willing to confess to killing 17 students and adults, and wounding 17 others.
One is that he’ll never get one cent of that insurance money. It won’t be available to him to pay any lawyers. His victims have better claims to it.
The other is that he will spend every day of the rest of his life, whether it be long or short, in prison. Even if he were to be spared the death sentence, conviction of first-degree murder requires a life sentence without eligibility for parole. That’s 17 potential consecutive life sentences for the killings, plus 17 more for the victims who survived.
It wouldn’t be comfortable incarceration, either. Far from it. Among prisoners, those who kill children are the lowest of the low. Cruz’s notoriety would make him an especially obvious target for some inmate with an attitude and a shiv. The Department of Corrections would be compelled to keep him in administrative segregation under conditions approximating those on death row. To be blunt about it, his life expectancy in the general inmate population could be shorter than if he were on death row.
The offer he made through his public defenders to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences — rather than death — remains on the table. State Attorney Mike Satz and the Parkland parents should weigh it against the consequences of a possible indeterminate delay and the not-inconsiderable chance that a jury would spare his life.
Florida law now requires the unanimous vote of 12 jurors to impose death. The misgivings of just one would mean life in prison.
The calculated, methodical massacre at Parkland is what Satz described it just days after the shooting: “The type of case the death penalty was designed for.”
But that was before he and the public learned of the steps not taken in response to multiple omens of what Cruz had become and what he might do. The FBI brushed off an explicit warning that he could be a school shooter. Fellow students took their fears to an administrator — in vain.
Plaintiff attorneys also allege that as an outlet for Cruz’s well-known aggression, his therapists at Henderson Behavioral Health encouraged his use of violent video games and supported him getting a punching bag and an airsoft gun. The community mental health provider denies the allegations. CEO Steven Ronick said no such encouragement or support was ever given.
None of what anyone else did or didn’t do excuses the murders. But the litany of failures by multiple agencies might easily persuade at least one juror to vote against death.
In the recent case of a St. Petersburg father who dropped his five-year-old daughter from a bridge into the frigid waters of Tampa Bay, in full view of a police officer, the prosecution took the death penalty off the table. The question wasn’t whether the man was mentally ill, but whether he was so far from reality as to be innocent by reason of insanity.
Legal insanity is extraordinarily hard to prove. The jury found him guilty instead and he is serving life.
Weighing all the odds, State Attorney Bernie McCabe of the Sixth Circuit chose a certain outcome that protects society from any future crimes by John Jonchuck, as surely as a death sentence would have.
Perhaps Mike Satz should have a talk with McCabe.
Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated to say the allegations that Henderson Behavioral Health therapists had encouraged Nikolas Cruz to use violent video games, or supported him getting an airsoft gun, were made by plaintiff attorneys in a civil suit, not revealed in a civil trial this week, as previously stated. The community mental health provider never encouraged Cruz to use violent video games or supported him obtaining such a gun, says CEO Steven Ronick.
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Sergio Bustos, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.