The penalty trial for the Parkland School shooter starts today in Broward County. Four years after the shooting. Four years. The wheels of justice.
The shooter has already admitted to doing it. By the way, I never give the name of mass shooters. Don’t want to give them any publicity or recognition. He shot and killed 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. He injured 17 more.
His guilt is not in question. What’s left to be done here is what to do with him? Life in prison or the death penalty. Experts say this penalty trial could last four months. The wheels of justice.
This trial will be the deadliest U.S. mass shooting to reach a jury. “To reach a jury.” It is however, not even in the top five worst mass shootings in America.
Here they are: 1). A mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas. 60 dead. 2). The Pulse nightclub shooting. 49 dead. 3). The Virginia Tech shooting. 32 dead. 4). Sandy Hook Elementary. 27 dead. 5). The Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting. 26 dead.
It sickens me to type that last paragraph. It sickened me to read it on TV this morning. That’s where we are in this country with gun violence.
I’m not in a good place right now.
Here’s how the weekend went. In Indiana, three people are dead and two hurt after a gunman opened fire inside a mall. A 22-year-old man who was legally carrying a firearm shot and killed the shooter.
The news about the Uvalde school shooting just seems to get worse. A report released by the Texas House of Representatives criticizes the response by not only the local police, but also state and federal law enforcement too. “Multiple systemic failures,” the report says.
The panel says they all failed in several ways when responding to the shooting. “A lackadaisical approach,” the report says of those at the scene. Four hundred officers at the scene. It took more than an hour to stop one gunman.
400 officers, deputies and agents waited while 19 kids and 2 adults were killed. I can’t even begin to wrap my brain around that. What went so wrong?
I think we will never know all that went wrong in Uvalde, Texas, that horrible day. The families certainly deserve to know.
My producer said to me this morning, “there’s not a lot of good news today.” I get it. It’s Monday, after a weekend in America. I’m getting used to it.