At a campaign event Sunday, WFTV-9 reported Gov. Ron DeSantis called for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas murderer to be sentenced to death, after a jury confined him to life in prison without parole.
"That was a miscarriage of justice that did not honor the victims and the families, and all that they went through," the Flordia Republican told the crowd. And DeSantis wants to change the way the death penalty law works.
Florida law requires a jury to be unanimous on death sentences, and Andrew Pollack, father of Parkland victim Meadow Pollack, is outraged.
"You see, my daughter was in my ear every night, and she said, Daddy, you find out what happened, and you hold those people accountable," Andrew Pollack told WFTV-9. "I'm sorry, when you murder 17 people in cold blood, the only appropriate punishment is capital punishment."
Florida's death penalty law softened in 2017, requiring unanimous votes to deliver a death sentence, a 12-0 vote. Until then, a jury only needed a simple majority, 7-5, vote to hand down a death sentence as opposed to life in prison without parole.
At least one juror sought the death penalty, but he respected the decision of others on the panel that refused to vote for it.
"Everybody has the right to decide for themselves; it is a moral decision on their own and some of the jurors felt that way," he told WFTV-9.
Broward County public defender Gordon Weekes, the attorney for the convicted murderer said, "This is the system that we all cherish, that we all abide by and supported by our Constitution."
The murderer's official sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 1, and Florida law prohibits the judge from delivering anything but the jury's recommendation of life in prison.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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