St. Louis, Mo., Oct 14, 2022 / 12:24 pm
Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami spoke out this week to support a life sentence for the man who killed more than a dozen people at a Florida high school in 2018, calling the punishment both “severe and just.”
“A sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole is a severe and just punishment that also will allow Nikolas Cruz to continue to reflect on the grave harm he caused,” Wenski said in an Oct. 13 statement.
Cruz killed 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, with a semiautomatic rifle during a February 2018 rampage. The 24-year-old will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole after being sentenced in a Florida court on Thursday.
Willful murder is a heinous crime, Wenski said, but “human dignity — that of the convicted as well as our own — is best served by not resorting to the extreme and unnecessary punishment of capital punishment.”