BREAKING: Florida jury recommends death penalty for Parkland shooter (update: life in prison)

The trial of the former student who shot and killed 17 people and wounded 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has finally come to an end, with a Fort Lauderdale jury unanimously recommending the death penalty. …

Among the seven specific aggravating factors highlighted by the state’s case were that the murders were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” and “cold, calculated, and premeditated,” as well as disrupting a lawful government function (the operations of a public school), committing first-degree murder while committing other felonies, and knowingly “creating a risk of death to many persons.” Jurors heard heart-wrenching testimony from family members of those who were killed and students who survived the shooting, and were shown security camera video footage of the shooting that has not been made public.

UPDATE (Ed): Mediaite got this wrong. The jury recommended life without parole, as the New York Times later reported:

[Perp], the profoundly disturbed young man who carried out a massacre in the hallways of his former high school four years ago, igniting an anti-gun-violence movement led by students raised in an era mass shootings, should not be condemned to death and instead should spend the rest of his life in prison, a state jury said on Thursday.

The jury of seven men and five women returned a recommendation for life in prison without the possibility of parole for all 17 first-degree murder counts in the case, following less than a day of deliberations in a grueling and often emotional sentencing trial.