I hope your ever breathing moment here on earth is miserable and you repent for your sins. Nicholas and burning Hell. We break down some of the most powerful and dramatic moments in the sentencing hearing for the confessed Parkland school shooter. Welcome to sidebar, presented by Long Crime. I'm Jesse Webber. This' Parkland murderer is going to come a day. It could be a week from now, it could be a month from now, it could be forty years from
now. You're gonna die. When you die, it is my fondest hope that they take you and put and burn you, and take your ashes and thrown in the garbage dump. I hope you're maker send you directly to Hell to burn for the rest of your eternity. The sentencing for the confessed to Parkland school shooter is over. Judge Elizabeth Sure officially sentenced Nicholas Crews to life
in prison without the possibility of parole. This came, of course, after a jury recommended that the killer be sentenced to life in prison as opposed to
the death penalty. As you know, the shooter had pled guilty to seventeen counts of murder and seventeen counts of attempted murder for opening fire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School back in twenty eighteen, and the jury's decision of life over death hit the victims and the victim's family members particularly hard because this is not what they wanted, and they made that very clear directly after this verdict in
a post verdict press conference. But we had absolutely no idea what we would end up seeing in this sentencing hearing, because you see, under the law, victims and victims' family members can provide impact statements to the court in anticipation of the official sentencing by a judge, and sometimes these statements can really play a more practical role. They can actually have an important effect on the judge.
A judge who had as discretion handing down a sentence, maybe judge would hear some of these statements and recommend five years in prison as opposed to one year in prison. But here that wasn't the case for Judge Elizabeth Sure. There really wasn't anything she could do. The jury recommended life in prison, so that's the sentence she had by law she has to hand down. But that didn't stop any of these individuals from providing incredibly powerful and arguably controversial statements
in court. And to give you a sense of that, I want to start with a statement from Linda Beegel Shulman. She is the mother of victim Scott Beagele, the thirty five year old geography teacher who actually helped save the lives of several of his students. On that day, I learned that here in Florida, the average death penalty case takes eighteen years from sentencing to execution.
That means that I would probably be dead before you are executed. I will go forward knowing that you are going to a maximum security prison with other murderers much tougher than you are. A prison where you will spend the rest of your miserable life having to look over your shoulder, worried about every single minute of your day of your life, and scared out of your mind,
fearful for someone to take you out. A prison where you will be other inmates, boy toy, A prison where your fellow prison inmates are just waiting to tear you apart. Because from what I hear, child killers are highly frowned upon and hated in prison. You will look back at the time that you spent in the Broward County jail and see it as it was a hotel
compared to the prison where you are headed. As far as I'm concerned, real justice would be done if every family here were given a bullet and your AR fifteen, and we got to pick straws, and each one of us got to shoot one at a time at you, making sure that you've felt every bit of it, and your fear continued to mount until the last family member who pulled that last straw had the privilege of making sure that they killed
you. That's real justice for you. And this is pretty consistent with what we've heard the parents hoping and praying that crews be killed in prison, a form of street justice, clearly expressing their pain and heartbreak, but also their frustration at the legal system, their frustration at the jury for not voting in favor of death. And we heard this theme not only that the jury got it wrong, but perhaps that the law needs to be over because in Florida,
the all law actually changed before twenty sixteen. All you needed was a majority vote of a jury to recommend the death penalty, but then it changed to become a unanimous jury vote, and at least one parent expressed that that's not fair, that how can a minority vote rule? After all, if one juror votes in favor of life in prison, the sentence is life in
prison. Now that's a whole different conversation for another day. But I want to go back to the statements, and I should tell you that these parents and the family members didn't only direct their anger towards Nicholas Cruz. The controversy that I mentioned before is when they directed their comments to the defense team who advocated that the death penalty wasn't warranted and highlighted for the jury the defendant's mental
health troubles is problematic early life. And remember, in a way they won, right, they got life in prison, so the defense won here, Well, here is Max Shackter, the father of fourteen year old Alex Shachter who was killed at Parkland. You're making the mental health crisis in America worse by misrepresenting what actually happened to the Parkland murderer. Just say you can receive fame and notoriety and go on a book tour. There are so many people
that really need mental health services and did not get them. But that's not the case with the Parkland murderer. His psychiatrists, his psychologists, counselors, ese teachers all testify to that effect. He was on medication for most of his life. The problem was that he didn't receive not that they didn't receive services or medication. The problem was that none of it worked. You obviously have a very high tolerance for murder. God knows what you're showing your kids
on television. You obviously have no conscience if you don't think that this is the worst of the worst. How could you sit there listening to what he did and say this is not the worst of the worst. He hunted down innocent children and staff terrified, then tortured them, blew their heads apart like a water balloon, and enjoyed it. That doesn't make it on your worst of the worst murderers list. You make me sick. And it didn't end there. You see. At one point, Manuel Oliver made a victim impact
statement. This is the father of seventeen year old victim Joaquin Oliver, and he decided to address something that the defense had allegedly done because the week before the trial began, there was a hearing that was going to be held, and before the hearing even started up, the video camera in court actually caught the defense seemingly discussing whether they should throw the middle finger up to the camera,
while mister Oliver decided to display that very same gesture directly towards the defense team, hiding your actions. The middle finger apologize and you need to learn how to do a middle finger, so you don't need to apologize, took anyone. These kinds of comments are what caused defense counsel Melissa McNeil to ask Judge Elizabeth Shure to step in and stop the parents from making these comments towards them, but the judge ended up dismissing her. Our system of justice is
designed the way that it was administered in this court room. If he would have gotten debt, we would not have said one single word about that, and we would respect to the jury's words. This is our system of government, Judge, and your honors should be maintained. The deformed supportland to prevent these families from attacking our children and from attacking us personally. When all we
were appointed on this. Okay, your your objection is voted, and the judge, oh boy, she got into a heated exchange with one of the defense lawyers. So I have no problem because I have a big skin. But once you bring in my children, I think that's highly improper. I even though you have children, I don't know what you're talking about your children, what about your children? But them's a comment on my children is highly
improper. You put the sports foot lab like kind of testy. Okay, Also, there was I don't remember any comments about any children, and if there was, it obviously didn't. It came and went without me noticing it. So I can assure that if they were talking about your children, you would definitely notice it. You need to sit down right now. You're out
of line. In fact, you're excused. You need to go sit in the back with your with your chief public defender, mister Weeks, please ask the lawyer from your office to go sit down and not say anything else. To try to threaten my children and bring up my children is inappropriate. Go to the back of the room. Now. That just violated about every rule of professional responsibility that I have ever. I have never if you're going to get up here and you're going to should I ask you to go sidebar on
this matter. You sidebar or not. You don't have one of your assistant public defenders say something about my children. Judge. That same venom that the court is expressing is the same venom that defence counsel had to sit through this entire morning when there put up her children multiple times during the trial. Nobody knows if I'm barn or not. They don't know about my children. Sit down, Sit down, Judge, sit down. Mister Weeks, please do
not summarily simari no sit down. I'm asking the court. I asked the court to go side book, go sit down. You don't threaten children courtroom, Go sit down. No one in this courtroom had to endure what we sit down. Miss McNeil has made her children a spectacle more than once during this trial. That was her choice. You have absolutely no right to have one of your assistants come up here and suggest something about my children. Now, please go sit down. Judge. You're inappropriate and out of line.
Clearly emotions were running high in that courtroom, and of course there's the question of whether or not the judge should have acted the way that she did. Was that judicial temperament. Should she have allowed victim impact statements to address the defense, lawyers and the jury. Typically we don't see that, right, We don't usually see that. We see the statements directed towards the defendant.
But then again, maybe the victims, maybe they should the victims family members, Maybe they should have had a chance to say whatever they want to say. Maybe they should have an open forum. The law does give a lot of leeway for them to say what they want to say. So should the judge have blown up at the defense in order them to the back of the
courtroom. These are all outstanding questions at the moment, and again, we could focus on that at a later time, and we could also do a probably a full two hour show on all of these really powerful and poignant statements
that were delivered by each person in that courtroom. But I thought I would end with this the statement of Anne Ramsey, the mother of seventeen year old victim Helena Ramsey, And as you'll hear, she recounts and kind of trans transports us back to the horror of that day, but she also explains how her family's situation and experience was very different. I lost Helena, my daughter on my birthday, and we should have been out celebrated and laughing and joined
dinner, just doing the usual birthday celebrations spent. Instead, we spent hours fruitlessly searching nearby hospitals for Helena because we were told that she was injured. Someone had mistaken her for Samantha Grady, which was often the case, so we thought she was injured, so we braced ourself ourselves for the worst, and then we went to the Theward North Broward General Hospital, the main hospital, and we asked for our daughter. I mean, the whole family was
searching for our daughter. And when we were at the hospital, just by looking at the response, we knew they knew our daughter had died. But they sent us to the Marriot. They sent us to the Marriot Center, and we feel that they should have told us at the hospital because the hospital is equipped with conference rooms, chapels, equipped to tell people the passing off
their loved ones. Instead, we were sent to a marrier And let me tell you, we were waiting there for hours and hours and hours, listening to the screams and the howling of all the other families. All of my family was there that night. You were in the hospital, you were being taken care of, while our loved ones lay dead. I was asked by a reporter would the shoot have been killed if he was black? And I had to stand there and think about that. I had to think about that
because it's not that simple. The shooter, if he was black, would not have made it past the gate, because that's the response. It's an aggressive response. He would have been stopped before he entered the gate. So I couldn't have said he would have been shot. No, I can say the response would have been different, And this is how we are treated. Same with the Broward schools. My daughter didn't get her acknowledgment. The same with the browd Sheriff's office, my family, all of my family were there
until three am while you were in the hospital. And after all of these statements, the judge imposed the sense. But before she did, she did have some parting words for everyone. And I can't help but think of how I would behave or respond if I were in your shoes. And the way that you have grieved so gracefully and have shown extraordinary restraint throughout this process is
something that I've never seen. And as a group of people, you are so strong and so united that if anything good came out of this event. I feel seeing you, I can know that you are all going to be okay because you have each other. And after the judge imposed the sentence, cruise was taken away, his defense attorneys left the courtroom, and the victims actually waited in line in the courtroom to give the judge a hug. What
an ending to an absolutely incredibly sad and devastating case. And thanks so much everybody for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.