Ron DeSantis Doubles Down: ‘We Need to Reform’ Laws After ‘Miscarriage of Justice’ in Parkland Shooter’s Sentence

Gov. Ron DeSantis hopes to work with the Florida legislature to reform laws in the aftermath of the Parkland shooter’s sentencing — no death penalty — over four years after the massacre.

“When you have something happen, like this Parkland massacre, you need to hold people accountable, and nobody was being held accountable,” DeSantis said during a campaign speech in Coral Springs, Florida, over the weekend:

And so I came into office almost a year after it happened. First week in office, we removed the sheriff of this county. We then convened a special grand jury that investigated failures not just here but other parts of the country … [and] other parts of the state about different types of school security, and that led to this report, where we then removed the number of the school board members who were derelict.

“And that’s good, but then you’re sitting there last week and you see, four and a half years after this happen, they do that the penalty phase,” he said, noting that at least one juror refused “to budge and refused to authorize the ultimate punishment.”

“I’m sorry. When you murder 17 people in cold blood, the only appropriate punishment is capital punishment. That should have been a death sentence,” DeSantis said, telling the crowd that he plans to work with the legislature to reform some of the laws.

“You can’t just have one holdout do that, and who knows what was going on back there, but that was a miscarriage of justice. That did not honor the victims and the families, and all that they went through. And I think we’ll be able to do something legislatively,” he said, reemphasizing that the sentence was not fair to victims and their families.

“This goes on and drags on for this time, and that is not, I think, a way to honor the rights of victims,” he said, adding that he wants the criminal justice system “not to be bending over backwards for the criminals but to stand up for victims and victims’ rights.”

“And that’s what we’re gonna do,” he vowed.

This is not the first time DeSantis has expressed disapproval of Nikolas Cruz’s sentencing — life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“The only appropriate sentence for the massacre of 17 innocent people is the death penalty,” DeSantis said in a social media post last week: