FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Nikolas Cruz, the profoundly disturbed young man who carried out a massacre in the hallways of his former high school four years ago, igniting an anti-gun-violence movement led by students raised in an era of mass shootings, should not be condemned to death and instead should spend the rest of his life in prison, a state jury said on Thursday.
In a swift decision that stunned many of the victims’ families, the jury of seven men and five women sentenced Mr. Cruz to life in prison without the possibility of parole for all 17 first-degree murder counts, after about seven hours of deliberations in a grueling and often emotional sentencing trial.
