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The last thing Fred Gutenberg said to his 14-year-old daughter was that it was time to go and that he would be late. Hours after driving his two children to school that Valentine’s morning in 2018, a gunman opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida — killing 17 people, including Jaime Gutenberg.
During Tuesday’s sentencing for convicted gunman Nikolas Cruz, Gutenberg’s voice cracked as he spoke of the imagined future he has for Jaime, one that never happened. But his weren’t the only tears falling in court — members of Cruz’s defense team were also crying, videos show.
“I can’t remember if I ever told Jaime that day how much I loved her. I never knew I would lose the chance to say it over and over and over again,” Guttenberg said as public defender Naval Najet Bashiman wiped his eyes with a tissue. Two others on Cruz’s team also shed tears during testimony Tuesday.
Jurors have heard from teachers, survivors and families whose lives were upended by the massacre since the trial began on July 18. They watched videos of students running for their lives and listened to the screams and loud bangs that rang through the air that day — all to determine whether Cruz, who pleaded guilty in October, should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment without possibility of commutation.
Prosecutors arguing for the death penalty based their case on seven of the aggravating factors set out in state law, including that Cruz’s actions were “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.”
“These actions, killing 14 children, an athletic director, a coach and a teacher, are why we are here today — cold, calculating, manipulative and deadly,” Broward County State’s Attorney Michael Satz said in his opening statement.
In Florida, the death penalty requires a unanimous jury recommendation. If sentenced to death, Cruz, now 23, would be one of the youngest people to receive the sentence in decades.
Cruz’s defense attorneys, who offered a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence, had previously painted a picture of a troubled young man showing signs of remorse after struggling with mental health issues and a difficult childhood. However, they announced on July 18 that they would not make an opening statement until it was time to present their case in the coming weeks.
Four years after the Parkland school massacre, parents of the victims are protesting and grieving
Meanwhile, however, the proceedings were filled with testimony from parents recounting heartache after heartache — stirring emotions even for those working to save Cruz’s life.
It’s rare for lawyers to cry in the courtroom — especially “based on something the other side said,” said Keith Swisher, a professor of legal ethics at the University of Arizona’s James E. Rogers College of Law.
Because it was an “incredibly huge, heated and atypical case,” it was unlikely to have negative consequences for lawyers, he said. However, it could prompt Cruz to seek a new lawyer, he added.
“In a typical legal case … the client is likely to feel betrayed and perhaps the wrong signal will be sent to the judge or jury if the client’s own attorney cries foul over the opposing side’s evidence or arguments,” Swisher said. “If crying or other visible signals are likely to bias the jury against the defendant, the defendant may have cause to appeal.”
On Tuesday, Thomas and Genna Hoyer described how the loss of their 15-year-old son Luke — affectionately called “Lucky the Bear” by his mother — irreparably shattered what had been a “family unit of five, always trying to fit into a world , created for even numbers,” said Thomas Heuer.
Luke was a “surprise baby”, arriving a few years after his older siblings. That morning on February 14, he woke up to a bag of Skittles and a card from his mother. His father, on his way to work, shouted “Have a nice day” from downstairs without seeing Luke’s face — in “the kind of casual conversation you have when you think you’ve been together forever,” Hoyer said, “and then we don’t T.”
During Hoyers’ victim impact statement, public defenders Bashiman and Tamara Curtis couldn’t hold back tears. Chief Public Defender Melissa McNeil deleted hers. Cruz sat expressionless.
Soon after, Judge Elizabeth Scherer called a 10-minute recess.
As those in court stood up and began to clear the room, crumpled tissues could be seen on the table where the defense team sat — they would be used again.
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