Nikolas Cruz

After a jury recommended the sentence, the judge could not change it. But she did allow victims and families to speak directly to Nikolas Cruz for the first time to express their anger and grief.

During a hearing at the Broward County Courthouse on Tuesday, victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School poured out their grief and anger — at the confessed gunman and the judicial system.

A two-day hearing is scheduled to begin Tuesday that will conclude with Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer formally sentencing Nikolas Cruz.

After the jury recommended a life sentence, there was a notion that the verdict will set a precedent of leniency that could help motivate future mass killers. An expert breaks down that claim.

Until 2016, Florida law allowed trial judges to impose a death sentence if a majority of the jurors agreed. But now, anything less than 12-0 means an automatic sentence of life without parole.

Prosecutors in the case of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz are calling for an investigation after a juror said she felt threatened by another member of the jury during deliberations.

Minutes after Nikolas Cruz was spared the death penalty, family members whose loved ones were violently taken from them at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School said the justice system had failed them. Local and state officials also expressed their disappointment.

Fourteen students and three staff members were killed in the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day in 2018. Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty last year to first-degree murder.

In the last phase of the death penalty trial for Nikolas Cruz, lawyers gave their final remarks on what should happen to the shooter. It is now on the jury to decide his fate.

The defense team for Nikolas Cruz filed their request to remove Judge Elizabeth Scherer last Friday after she called them "unprofessional."

The death penalty trial for the Parkland shooting trial resumed this week after a two-week break and Nikolas Cruz's lawyers have continued to take jurors through his life chronologically as they seek to prove his difficult childhood contributed to the violence.

Defense lawyers for the Parkland school shooter rested their case Wednesday, a move that came as a surprise — especially to the judge.