Yes the severity and personal nature of the act will definitely would be one of the aggravating factors prosecutors will mention during a death penalty sentencing hearing; however, with Parkland they had him on video going back and shooting several victims that he had already shot again to make sure they were dead—with extremely brutal injuries for some victims. Allegedly, the jury was shown these videos. One common aggravating factor is also risk to the general public which is better proven by shooting rather than stabbing so there are pros and cons to going after the death penalty in both cases. Then, the defense can present “mitigating” factors. In the parkland case, they presented the fact that the shooter may have had fetal alcohol syndrome as a factor that mitigated the severity of his crime. They also presented that he was bullied and his mom died recently. I’m sure BK has similar “mitigating” factors that his defense could argue.

The real issue is it is incredibly tough to find a jury that doesn’t have at least one person with ideological objections to the death penalty who aren’t biased one way or another. The majority of Americans have valid qualms over the death penalty and each side can only reject so many people during voir dire. With Parkland, every juror except one determined that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors in all of the (17 i think?) deaths. One juror was a hold out on every single charge, even the students he brutally maimed. That juror claims she wasn’t motivated by ideological reasons and that the shooter’s fetal alcohol syndrome was mitigating enough for her, but the other jurors claim she refused to consider the aggravating factors due to religious reasons.