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.
