FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The state of Florida spent more than $2 million prosecuting and then trying — but ultimately failing — to obtain a death sentence for the man who shot and killed 17 victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, according to the Broward State Attorney’s Office.
It’s not money that would have been spent anyway: most of it, $1,542,859, was allocated to Broward by the state Legislature to accommodate the need to try a deceptively complex case that ended up being as much about what was going on inside the defendant’s head as it was about the actions he took and the 17 lives he ended.
According to figures provided by the prosecutor’s office, the tab from Feb. 14, 2018, the date of the massacre, through Friday was $2,006,210. It includes the salaries of Assistant State Attorneys Mike Satz and Jeff Marcus, who were set to step down from their jobs in January 2021 but stayed to finish the case. It includes DNA and ballistics experts, psychologists and psychiatrists who examined the defendant and critiqued the work of defense experts.
Broward taxpayers are also on the hook for the defense — confessed killer Nikolas Cruz was indigent, his healthy $400,000 inheritance tied up by the many lawsuits filed by the families of the people he killed, wounded and traumatized.
The Sun Sentinel previously calculated that the trial cost $90,000 a month just to pay the lawyers on both sides from the start of jury selection in April through the decision in October.
The Broward Public Defender’s Office has not released its case expenses, and the figures released by the State Attorney’s Office do not include court administration or the security expenses incurred by the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
Through his lawyers, Cruz offered in the earliest days of the case to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence, but prosecutors refused to allow him to decide his own fate after he deprived so many others of their lives.
While the defendant’s guilt was never in question, his mental state was. For 3½ years, defense lawyers appeared ready to make prosecutors do their job by going through a trial to have a jury decide he’s guilty. A year ago, they changed course. Cruz was not legally insane, and that was the only hope of obtaining a not-guilty verdict.
Cruz pleaded guilty without a charade of a trial.
Had it stopped there, the public expense would have ended. But most victims’ family members wanted more than just a guilty verdict. They wanted a death sentence. The trial proceeded.
It’s hard to tell at this stage what the final cost to taxpayers will be. At least $3 million. More like $4 million or $5 million.
But for those who cared the most, it was worth it.
“In a civilized society holding the most dangerous amongst us to account is a requirement for the safety of all,” said Fred Guttenberg, father of Jaime Guttenberg, one of the victims of the massacre. “The story isn’t the cost of the trial. Ask me about the cost of health care for the victims who lived, or burials for those who did not. The trial is just one part of the cost of gun violence in this country. That’s the more important figure.”
According to a recent study by the advocacy group Everytown Research & Policy, gun violence costs $557 billion a year.
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