Jury recommends life without parole for Parkland shooter TT

Driving the news: The death penalty was on the table for Cruz, but the jury would've had to reach that decision unanimously.

The latest: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday he believed Cruz should have received the death penalty and expressed disappointment in the jury's recommendation.

"I think that if you have a death penalty at all, that that is a case — where you're massacring those students, with premeditation, in utter disregard of basic humanity — that you deserve the death penalty," DeSantis said.

The big picture: Last October, Cruz pleaded guilty to all counts for carrying out the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 14 students and three staff members.

Cruz pleaded guilty to 17 murder counts and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder for carrying out the mass shooting.

The shooting in Parkland was the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. high school.

Between the lines: The jury in the case considered whether aggravating circumstances of the shooting — like committing murders that were "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" — outweighed "mitigating factors" of Cruz's life, which is a step that's required to issue a death sentence in Florida.

Those factors included Cruz's admission of guilt, his biological mother's alleged drinking problem and his adoptive mother's alleged failure to get him proper psychiatric care.

At least one member of the jury found the aggravating circumstances did not outweigh the mitigating factors, rejecting the death penalty.

What they're saying: "We are beyond disappointed with the outcome today. This should have been the death penalty, one hundred percent. 17 people were brutally murdered," said Lori Alhadeff, whose 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa Alhadeff, was murdered in the shooting.

I'm disgusted with our legal system. I'm disgusted with those jurors. I'm disgusted with the system," said Ilan Alhadeff, Alyssa's father. "That you can allow 17 dead and 17 others shot and wounded and not give the death penalty. What do we have the death penalty for?"

"I'm stunned. I'm devastated. There are 17 victims that did not receive justice today," Fred Guttenberg, father of 14-year-old victim Jaime Guttenberg, said. "This jury failed our families today."

What's next: Cruz will be officially sentenced to life without parole on Nov. 1. He will be in the custody of the Broward County Sherriff's Office until then.

The family of the deceased victims and the surviving victims have a right under Florida's Constitution to address Cruz in person.

A jury recommends life in prison for Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz

A jury has recommended that the shooter who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Nikolas Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty last year to 17 charges of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The question facing jurors now was whether Cruz would spend the rest of his life in prison or be sentenced to death.

Unanimity among the 12 jurors is required to impose the death penalty.

The jury unanimously found that there had been aggravating factors in the murders Cruz committed. But at least one juror concluded that for each murder, the aggravating factors did not outweigh mitigating circumstances in his case, and thus the death penalty is not merited — resulting in the recommendation of a life sentence.

In the reading of the verdict sheets for the 17 counts of murder that stretched about an hour, it could be difficult for observers to discern immediately what the jury had decided.

Several people in the courtroom – including families of the victims — shook their heads in disbelief and had tears in their eyes as it became clear that the jury had recommended a life sentence for Cruz rather than the death penalty.